Innocent Faith, Experienced Reason
by AncientLou
Summary: The Tower is fallen and the City Ruins are silent. A man born to vanish and an android made to be sacrificed meet by chance. Together, they explore the aftermath of the 14th Machine War. [Automata Ending C Compliant and Post-DMCV, mind the spoilers]
1. Heaven's Shore

V opened his eyes to sullen clouds and ashen rays of light. The scent of smoke and burnt metal tingled in his nose, chased by the slightly more pleasant scent of damp grass. He blinked slowly. The sound of waves rolling in was all around him as if he were afloat in a strange dream. It was only when the chill began to seep in through the back of his coat that he fully realized he was awake again.

He sat up. Looked at his tattoo-covered hands. Patted them over his thin chest. Felt the shape of his face. He was himself—his human self—again.

He clenched his eyes against the gray light and tried to think. He remembered Urizen laying almost dead, the final blow, their re-joining, and then... The top of the Qliphoth. Nero. Traveling down to hell with Dante. Maybe they would find their way back, maybe they wouldn't. Either way, the Qliphoth was gone.

The twitch of a smile touched V's lips. Somewhere, he and his brother were together, reclaiming something that had been lost in their uniquely stubborn way.

So where was this then?

The glint of his cane greeted him as he opened his eyes. He looked again at his hands. They were smooth. No cracks or any sign of deterioration at all. He still leaned heavily on the cane to stand, but it no longer required him to near-exhaust his will on pushing through pain.

"I take it by your uncanny silence," he murmured, extending his arm. "That you have nothing to relay?"

Griffon fluttered down and gingerly took the offered perch. "Not a lot about the situation that makes sense, V. I'm a little lost for words."

"How long has it been?"

"Can't say, I wasn't exactly expecting to return from the dead."

V glanced aside at his familiar. Vergil had never given any thought to the fates of the three, and so neither had he. Until this moment.

"You remember anything?" Griffon asked as if picking up on V's thoughts. "We're already back, I might as well know if we died for shit all."

"...Vergil didn't remember," he answered, not unkindly.

"Eh, I'll take it." He took off, flapping busily to stay at eye level with V. "Wherever we're at, I'm feelin' good about being not dead again, so let's focus on keeping that going. There's not a demon in sight, but the shore's littered with bodies and we might be in a liiittle bit over our heads—check out the smoke factory."

V followed Griffon's gaze out to sea. Between the sunken skeletons of skyscrapers and strange, jutting white pillars, a many-armed behemoth rose from the water. Flames flickered like distant stars from within its frame and sighed black smoke into the sky.

An eye cast away from the waters found the shore just as baffling. Skyscrapers covered in massive trees stretched up behind him. There were bodies, as Griffon said. Some were clad in black, some were naked and so charred that their skin was peeled back. Only there was no flesh beneath. Just bundles of cables in a mimicry of muscle and milky white shells in place of bone. All around were destroyed scraps and dismantled shape. Gears, bolts, and screws scattered across the grass like blood on the floor of an abattoir.

V turned inland, determined to be away from there while the calm persisted.

"Hey!" Griffon called, sailing after him. "You're just gonna leave?"

He glanced over his shoulder and briefly took in the alien scenery again. "A battle happened here involving neither humans nor devils. I'd rather we stay as outsiders."

"Whoa whoa, wait-but what if there's a clue here? Y'know, where we are, why we're here?"

V flexed his fingers experimentally around his cane and took off at a confident stride. "Then we'll return. It seems we have been afforded the luxury of time."


	2. Cynical

Pod 153 and 042 sat on either side of 9S atop a half-crumbled spire where he sprawled like an abandoned toy. After his defeat, he eventually underwent a successful reboot, free of the logic virus and completely disconnected from the machine network. However, the seeming defeat of the N2 and the confirmation of A2's death had led to a different kind of abnormality in his mental state. Despite their warnings, he had abandoned his weapon and supplies in the forest. He behaved as though the hostile knight machines weren't there in spite of a fully functioning visual field. Eventually, he meandered back to the ruins to a high peak where he was unlikely to be found, and sat.

They had been there ever since.

A strange shadow passed over them. High above, a blue eagle carried a slender shape through the sky. Male model. Black hair. No visor. Covered in...black markings?

"BLACK BOX ACTIVITY DETECTED," Pod 153 announced. She floated back into position over 9S' shoulder with a friendly whir. "GOOD MORNING, 9S."

The fingers on the hand that 9S still had twitched and jerked. Significant motor delay had set in, and he found it difficult just to raise his head and keep the strange sight in his visual field.

"Analyze target," he croaked in a voice half-rusted by disuse.

"REPORT:" replied Pod 042. "NO BLACK BOX SIGNAL DETECTED."

"Another humanoid machine...?"

"NEGATIVE."

"So...a resistance android?"

"UNKNOWN. NO RECORD OF MATCHING MODEL TYPE."

It wouldn't have been the first time something weird had appeared. Emil was out there, after all. Sometimes 9S still heard him singing and crashing into things out in the ruins. But this was different. This looked like an android.

Only there was no way one that big could be carried off by a bird.

After a laborious climb, 9S managed to get back on his feet. "Status report."

"AFFIRMATIVE. 9S ENTERED SEMI-SUSPENDED STATE 947 HOURS AGO. REPEATED DIAGNOSTICS FOUND NO ERRORS DESPITE ABNORMAL BLACK BOX SIGNAL. "

"Systems report."

"NCFS, FFCS, AND HACKING CAPABILITIES OPERATIONAL. LOGIC VIRUS INFECTION STATUS: CLEAR. DETERIORATION IN PROCESSING SPEEDS FOR ALL SYSTEMS DETECTED. LEFT FOREARM REMAINS DAMAGED. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD UNDERGO MAINTENANCE."

"Later." He tottered toward the cusp of the spire, keeping his eyes on the trajectory of the unknown android. "I don't want to lose it."

"PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD STATE HIS INTENTIONS."

9S paused. He stared blankly down at the few machines that milled about in the white rubble of the fallen tower. The destruction of the tower seemed to have cleaned out their network entirely. They might obey their most basic function and return to killing androids, or they might develop their own ways of thinking. He didn't know. He didn't care.

Not one of them was more or less meaningless than him. Whether they thought or felt or loved or hated no longer mattered. They would never learn. They could never learn.

And neither could he.

"I have to know what it is," he answered. Words which might have once been filled with his boundless love for new information, but were now just dull, resigned echoes. "That's how I was made."


	3. Begin Again

"Woohoo, top floor!"

V dropped from Griffon's talons and landed gracefully on the roof of the highrise. He regarded his familiar's continued flight beyond into the open sky with genuine pleasure. His demonic power as he recalled it would have left Griffon struggling to carry him to the peak of a structure this tall.

"I feel like a new demon," Griffon bragged from above. "Hey, you sure you don't wanna try for that other rooftop?"

"Another time."

He strolled toward the lone dining table that inhabited the otherwise empty roof. Under a thick coat of dust, the surface was smooth and unweathered. Two empty candelabra stood, while a third had been knocked to the ground aside a fallen chair. A chair at the opposite side of the table stood empty. Before it sat abandoned bible, and a single apple so rotted it was little more than a stain.

V ran his fingers over the ancient but familiar text. "Not so far from home, then..."

He turned the chair with a flick of his cane and eased into it. He had come for the vantage point, but now that he had reached his goal, he considered the view without a sense of urgency. It was, after all, the same sight it had been on the way up.

Vast white stones littered the streets in piles that grew larger and closer together toward their epicenter, where they cluttered the mouth of a massive crater and half-buried a metal colossus. There was a curious geometry to some of the remains. A hint of curvature and carefully carved angles that suggested whatever they had once been was as beautiful as it was towering. Even from on high, the stones were pure, almost scathingly white. As on the shore, there were parts and odds and ends and black-clad bodies in the shape of young women.

The crumbled cityscape had gone unlived in so long that emptiness radiated like a physical force from every sun-washed stone and silent shadow. Yet the remains spoke of war. One from which the smoke had not even begun to clear.

A gentle wind blew over V, and he breathed as deeply as his body would allow. In spite of the dire conclusion and being no closer to understanding his situation, a grin had made its home on his lips.

He wasn't dying. All else being uncertain, that much was true. Griffon could feel it, and though V was careful to keep a more level head about it, so could he. From some unknown source flowed an intoxicating current of vitality that he wasn't certain he could truly contain. He was still human—fragile and a bit too thin for his own good, but he coursed with more power than he knew what to do with.

That would prove temporary, he imagined. Sooner or later, one side or the other of the conflict evident in the ruins would notice his presence and seek him out.

A metallic rattle distracted him from his thoughts. He stilled. It happened again, and his eyes scanned the far edge of the rooftop until they settled on the curve of a ladder bolted to the side of the building's exposed interior.

"Speak of the devil," he murmured.

Silently, he recalled Griffon and leaned patiently back into his seat. He was quite curious who, or perhaps more appropriately 'what', had followed him. If they were peaceful, perhaps he could convince them to give him information. If they weren't, he would know the shape of his new enemy.

He was already in the perfect location to dispose of them without drawing any further attention.

* * *

Perhaps the pods had been right. Climbing the ladder one-armed was far more of a challenge than 9S had initially expected. At this rate, he'd be lucky if the mysterious android was even still up there. Several times he considered hooking onto pod and just going back down, but by the time he was half-way there he was no longer really thinking. He doggedly pulled himself up by his good arm over and over, until the routine sank in so deep he no longer paid attention to how close he even was to his destination. It came as a shock when he pulled himself up and found himself tumbling over the last rung. He collapsed forward head over heel and landed gracelessly on his back.

A series of slow claps congratulated him from across the roof.

9S scrambled to his feet. The model was still there. He sat cross-legged, smiling as he returned his hands to the cane in his lap.

"Are you—" He stood straight and called out louder. "Are you a resistance member?

V's he lifted his chin. "Who asks?"

9S' fist tightened. There was a look about this guy—an aloof but self-satisfied intellect that churned up sickly memories of Adam. But he wasn't a machine. And he wasn't attacking.

"9S. YoRHa Unit 9S."

"YoRHa…" V repeated slowly, searching for something recognizable about the word and finding nothing. The boy's clothing matched the style of what few bodies still had them, but there was an overwhelming familiarity to the situation. Young man, white hair, missing an arm, getting into places he probably shouldn't be... He pressed the head of his cane against his lips. "I take it the bodies by the sea are also YoRHa."

"You're not a resistance member," 9S said tensely. "Are you?"

"I imagine you knew the answer to that before you pursued, otherwise…" He pointed his cane at the 9S' damaged arm. "You would not have come so far in such a state."

9S dropped into a ready stance, but V laughed and rose to his feet. "Do not rush toward death, little lamb." He tilted his head at the ruins around them. "I am a stranger in a strange land. My interest is only in finding more familiar surroundings."

"This sector hasn't been in contact with any others. Not in a long time." There hadn't been any outside contact since Grun's attack, in fact. 9S relaxed. If there was a stranger talking about the flooded city, it only made sense he might have come from that skirmish. "You must have survived the EMP attack somehow. Do you remember your name?"

The answer came quick and surprisingly easy given his earlier evasiveness. "V."

"Doesn't sound like any model type I've ever heard of... I think your memory might be damaged. I can take a look and repair you."

"That won't be necessary. I think you'll find you're not qualified to 'repair' me."

It was starting to irritate 9S the way V kept smiling. Like he knew something 9S didn't. He looked either run down or poorly built, but he had casually suggested he could kill 9S, and 9S didn't think that was a bluff. The cane wasn't sharpened to battle standard, but V kept it at the ready and 9S couldn't get a read on what it was made of. His expression was unconcerned, but his eyes stayed sharp and attentive on 9S' movements. Maybe he was a specialty unit…but did the Resistance have the resources to build something like him?

"I'd like a better look anyway, if you don't mind." He held his hands up and began to inch closer. He didn't have a weapon, so if he could just hack in and figure out this guy's deal before his guard was up— "I'm not going to hurt you."

V's smile only widened. "I promise, you won't."

As soon as he was in range, 9S hacked in. Nothing happened.

He tilted his head to the side and whispered urgently. "I thought hacking was online!"

"AFFIRMATIVE," answered Pod 153 at the same volume as ever, earning a flinch from 9S. "HACKING FUNCTIONALITY IS FULLY OPERATIONAL."

9S glanced at V, but he was covering his mouth in a polite attempt to hide his amusement. 9S felt his temperature starting to rise. He was being laughed at! "Why can't I get in?" he demanded hotly.

"UNIT V HAS NO SYSTEMS."

"What? Every android has to at least have an operating system!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. OS CHIP IS ESSENTIAL TO ANDROID FUNCTIONALITY."

"So how is that possible?!"

"TARGET IS AN ORGANIC LIFEFORM."


	4. Design Flaw

**Organic.**

The simple descriptor shot through the weeks of deep fog clouding 9S' mind and burned them away like a comet burning away clouds. The weight of every character of the knowledge he had gained since the destruction of YoRHa simultaneously lifted from his shoulders and crushed him anew in breath-stealing waves. His legs unceremoniously gave way and dropped him to the concrete. Through the tightness in his chest, he released a single, wavering whisper.

"He's... a human...?"

"ANALYSIS: LIKELIHOOD OF HUMAN SURVIVAL THROUGH ALL PREVIOUS MACHINE WARS AND FAILURE OF GESTALT PROJECT: 0%"

"Right...It's impossible."

"NEGATIVE. SUBJECT COMPOSITION 100% MATCH TO HUMAN RECORDS."

Another wave of giddiness and devastating pressure clashed inside 9S. He could have screamed at the pods for jerking him around like that, but only managed an animal cackle as his thoughts grew muddy and difficult to parse. They were right. It was impossible, but also undeniable: A human had appeared.

The red girls themselves could not have come up with a crueler truth to rub in his face. Why now? Why only after he had been through the Tower? Why only after YoRHa was destroyed?

9S might have drowned in the possibilities of how differently it all could have gone, if not for his lingering irritation at V's careless smile. It grew until it was a white-hot star inside of his body that threatened to melt him from within. How could V stand there like nothing he had seen had anything to do with him? It had everything to do with him. He was all there was; he was the single reason for everything that had happened in the last 10,000 years, but he didn't know or care. He didn't have the slightest idea.

If 9S hadn't thrown away his weapons, he would gladly have run himself through.

V was there, and no matter how much 9S might hate him, he longed for him in equal measure. Only after he had no one left did the thing that could have prevented it all appear. Lucky him, it was also one thing that could make him want to go on. He hated it—himself, the programming that made him this way—with far greater intensity than he could have ever managed for V. It was easier to.

The machine network had come to crave humanity. It imitated them, even in their failures, over and over again, just to be closer to them. The androids were built in humanity's image, ready to care for them and, failing that, prepared to die in their name. They craved humanity too. So much that they had created YoRHa androids and purposefully designed them to die rather than communally cope with humanity's extinction.

By only existing, V undid the lie. By only existing, V gave meaning to everything, even though it was designed to be pointless. By only existing, V gave 9S perfect insight as to why his creators made YoRHa.

Not that he wouldn't still kill every single one of them if given half a chance.

The tightness in his chest cleared, and he assessed himself with fresh perspective. Neglect had left him damaged and filthy. His systems were in a disgraceful state of disrepair. Popola and Devola had probably not survived, but he had the clarity for internal maintenance and the resistance to help him with the external. He needed to get as close to optimal function as he could.

"I..." he muttered out breathlessly. "I have to go."

The sharp metallic clink of the cane struck down beside 9S' good hand. He had no idea when V had closed in, but he stood over 9S with an almost exasperated expression. "That would be unwise."

9S' head felt hot, his body too small, as though he were going to burst out of it. What he initially mistook for cheap design was just a bent back, stubble, and the shadows of a sternum on an underweight body. A human, a real human he could have reached out and touched. He covered his mouth to hold in either a laugh or a scream or a sob, and could not guess which.

"ALERT: MULTIPLE MALFUNCTIONS IN PROCESSING DETECTED. WARNING: SUBJECT V MAY SUSTAIN DAMAGE DUE TO INTERNAL COMBUSTION AT THIS PROXIMITY."

V's eyebrows raised and he took a cautious hop-step back. "Is he about to self-destruct?"

"No!" 9S blurted, his voice hitching and distorting. "Nobody's destructing or combusting! But there's noise in my—I'm unstable and I don't want to—" He gritted his teeth. "I want to help you. But I need maintenance. I need to go."

"If that's true, you'll be glad to give me a parting gift. Information, as I asked."

"Pod 153, initiate full data transfer."

"NEGATIVE. TARGET IS AN ORGANIC—"

9S ground his fist into his forehead and groaned. "Yeah, yeah, I got it! Pod 042, I order you to remain with V and provide him any and all information he requires."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

V's eyes moved from Pod 042, now drifting peaceably just outside of arm's reach, to 9S, to Pod 153. 9S took it as a small victory that he was no longer smiling as he planted his cane and shrugged toward the edge of the rooftop.

"Little lamb," V called after him as he stumbled away. "Should another find their way here, expect to find them in pieces."

9S looked back from the ledge, panting as he struggled to keep himself under control. Other androids hadn't crossed his mind. Should he tell someone? Should he tell anyone? He turned away to hide his eyes as a flicker of jealousy coursed through him.

"I think that's a good idea."

Hopefully he could get a replacement visor somewhere. It might finally be time to take that tired rule about emotions a little more seriously.


	5. Known Unknown

V tapped his cane against his chin and watched the small black shape of 9S drift down toward the street on the speck of his remaining pod. The moment he landed, he took off at a run beyond what a human could have managed and quickly vanished beyond V's sight.

He paced back to the empty chair and considered the city for several silent minutes. The chatty pods had given new context to the decayed skyline and palpable emptiness. He didn't know where he was, but it no longer mattered in the face of what had happened. 9S had provided almost no actual information, but his near-allergic reaction to V's humanity was enlightening in other regards.

His gaze shifted up to the pod that had been left behind for him. Though it had no face, it looked perfectly content to quietly idle until addressed.

It wasn't an unpleasant change of pace. "Pod 042, was it?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"Where is the boy going?"

"HYPOTHESIS: UNIT 9S WILL RETURN TO LOCAL RESISTANCE CAMP FOR MAINTENANCE AND LIKELY RETRIEVE WEAPONS TO MAXIMIZE COMBAT FUNCTIONALITY."

"Combat?" V mused. "He didn't seem up to the challenge."

In a flurry of ink and shadow, Griffon took shape and fluttered busily around V. "Is that why you didn't call me? You don't usually get in close right away, so I thought you were finally gonna get your hands dirty and skewer that boy-bot but you went easy on him!"

"QUERY:" the pod announced. "WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE AVIAN LIFEFORM?"

"As Griffon is to me," V answered with an impish smile toward his feathered familiar. "So are you to 9S."

"UNDERSTOOD. GREETINGS, SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON."

"Cram the support unit stuff," Griffon cawed. "I'm more sophisticated than some floating box. I got charm and personality and a whole lotta power!"

The orange antennae atop the pod's head spun slowly, almost as if it were in thought. Instead of responding, it drifted in closer to V.

"PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT HIMSELF."

"Don't ignore me, soda can." Griffon snagged the pod by one of its arms and dragged it backward. "I'm sure V's the most interestin' thing in the world in a place where everybody's made of metal, but he's on the fragile side; give him some space, eh?"

"WARNING: SELF-DEFENSE SYSTEM ACTIVATED."

Bullets pelted Griffon's tail and he released Pod 042 with an ear-splitting squawk. "You little-! You shot me!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. PODS ARE PROGRAMMED TO PRIORITIZE SELF-PRESERVATION WHEN TARGETED."

"Yeah well, your sensor's twitchy." Sparks leaped over Griffon's feathers. "Lemme show you what real targeting looks like."

"Enough," V commanded, pressing Griffon back until he gave in with a pronounced 'hmph'. "There's no need for you to know anything about us, Pod."

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, POTENTIALLY RELEVANT ARCHIVES REPRESENT APPROXIMATELY 14,934 HOURS OF READING IN ADDITION TO 26,282 HOURS OF FOOTAGE SINCE THIS POD UNIT'S ROLL OUT DATE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WOULD ALLOW A TAILORED RESPONSE TO SUBJECT V'S INFORMATION REQUEST."

"Holy shit," Griffon whispered.

V pursed his lips in silent agreement. He had time, but not that kind of time. "When exactly was your roll out?"

"7 JANUARY 11942, 5:13AM."

His eyes glazed over. His lips numbly worked the words as though that would make them different.

"Eleven...thousand. Nine hundred... And forty-two." He sucked in a slow, steadying breath and pressed his bony fingers to his temples. "And what is today?"

"19 SEPTEMBER 11945, 2:33 PM."

The frown already making it's home on his face deepened to a grimace. The gap between his location and his destination was not a gap—it was an abyss. He could not imagine a way back any more than he could imagine how he had crossed over in the first place. It felt like all the vitality he had gained was siphoned away, leaving him as weak as a newborn. He had time, but in exchange, he had no plan and no idea where to begin. With multiple millennia in the way, he was no longer sure he even had a goal.

Griffon came to rest on the dusty table and couldn't help but fill V's stunned silence with his own nervous chatter. "Uhh, I'll be honest, I'd rather be dealin' with Urizen again. At least that made sense. This isn't Hell or some other weird dimension hop courtesy of the Yamato, it's the fuckin future! Is Vergil even still alive?!"

V's face twitched, and he shot Griffon a sharp look. Of course Vergil wasn't alive after so much time, but to draw attention to was to call into question the details of V's own presence. Now wasn't the time.

"We're a long way from home," V explained with the tight composure of a man plunged too deep into absurdity to cope without it. "I don't suppose time travel is alive and well here?"

"NEGATIVE."

"Of course." He pulled his fingers through his hair and hissed a sigh. "Father O Father what do we here, in this land of unbelief and fear..."

The familiarity of the words grounded him, at least enough to plant his cane and sit upright. There was no obvious way back, just as it wasn't obvious how he'd arrived there to begin with. He had strength, but until he knew where his efforts should be directed, it couldn't serve him. All he had to work with was time.

Time and perhaps a very different kind of power, if there were others who would respond to him as 9S had.

"Give me the briefest possible summary of what happened between humanity's decline and now."

"AFFIRMATIVE." The pod's shell opened and a projection little bigger than the page of a book appeared before V. After a few seconds, it filled with a series of texts.

"GESTALT REPORTS 1 THROUGH 11, PROJECT YORHA SERVER RECORD, AND RECENTLY COMPILED MACHINE RESEARCH REPORT PREPARED."


	6. Erratic

"TAMPERING WITH ACCESS POINT MAY INCUR PUNISHMENT."

The rusted vending machine facade gave an appropriately ancient creak as it stuttered. Hacking had gotten 9S past the defense system, but it was proving to be a lot more protective of the spare parts deeper inside.

"Does anyone actually have the authority to punish me?"

"CHAIN OF COMMAND UNCLEAR. HOWEVER, RESISTANCE MEMBER JACKASS WHO RESTORED THIS AREA'S TRANSPORT SYSTEM HAS SHOWN UNPREDICTABLE BEHAVIOR IN THE PAST."

"That's...actually a good point." He paused to assess where in the transport's systems he needed to go. Getting accustomed to destroying machines by hacking them had its perks, but this needed a more delicate touch. He didn't want to think about what Jackass would do to him if he blew up a transporter.

"If I can just convince it that there's already a scanner model in-coming..."

A hiss of steam rewarded him, and he snapped out of hacking space. The access point hummed quietly. Barring the peek of light and few muffled noises from inside, it appeared to not be doing anything at all.

1.907 seconds, 9S counted while he waited. Even accounting for the drop in his processing speed, that was an embarrassing time. There weren't many machines around to practice on, but he imagined that wouldn't be the case when it came time to retrieve his weapon.

The access point opened. 9S froze.

When he tried to recall most of what happened after the Bunker fell, it felt hot. All rush and red, like what he imagined the E-Drug felt like when used by combat models. The brand new 9S model freshly assembled inside the access point gave him the opposite feeling—like ice had just been poured into his wiring.

Without a consciousness transfer, the body was only that. It would never wake up. The expression was blank. Peaceful. It fell readily into his arms as soon as he touched it, and the access point closed behind it with an impersonal huff.

In the shadowed nook between the access point and the ancient concrete it was backed against, 9S unbuttoned his damaged coat. He kicked off his worn and filthy boots and shuffled out of his shorts. He even peeled off his socks. The replacements he pulled from his copy smelled faintly of warm metal.

"Hey, did V look kind of sick to you?" he asked casually.

"NO SYMPTOMS OF COMMON HUMAN ILLNESSES WERE DETECTED. HOWEVER, ANALYSIS SUGGESTS SUBJECT V IS BELOW AVERAGE WEIGHT ADJUSTING FOR SEX AND HEIGHT."

The arm snapped clean at the joint and sizzled as he attached it. Though he grimaced, he did not cry out.

Now the model looked more like him. He was thankful that Pod 153 didn't ask why when he replaced the blank model's clothes with his old, dirty uniform. Nor did it comment when 9S flexed his new fingers and closed his hands around the model's neck.  
It was only an empty shell. It wasn't him.

He took the blindfold instead. As soon as it was tied, his shoulders settled and he busily searched around for wildlife. "You think he could manage a boar on his own?"

"INQUIRY UNCLEAR."

"Well, if V's underweight it means he wasn't getting enough to eat right? You think he's strong enough to take down a boar?" He lifted the body up over his back with a grunt. "Or maybe get that bird he was flying on to do it?"

"UNKNOWN. …QUERY: WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF CARRYING THE DUPLICATE MODEL?"

"Hm? Oh, this? I might need more parts and I don't want to tamper with the access points again if I can avoid it. I'll hide it somewhere on the way."

* * *

He was glad for his freshened appearance when he arrived at the Resistance Camp. Turned heads and wide-eyed gazes followed him from the moment he stepped into the light, and though the attention wasn't hostile, he slowed to a stop by the flower bed.

"If you've got time to gawk, you've got time to move ass," an abrasive voice crowed.

9S tensed as a familiar face strode out from under a tent with Anemone in tow. "H..Hi Jackass."

She waved. Whether it was as a greeting or a dismissal was difficult to say as she was busily carrying tools to one of the camp's trucks.

"Do you...want some help?"

She raised a brow. "You're a real workaholic, huh?" She tossed her cargo in the carriage with no regard for order or even the integrity of the materials. "You wanna help me, grab a shovel and see what else you can find in all that tower rubble."

"Erm... Probably not a good idea. I'm actually here for repairs."

"Then what'd you even ask for?!" She hoisted herself into the driver's seat. "I've got more data than I know what to do with and I bet there's more. Take a break, squirt."

The engine revved, and she drove soberly out of camp. 9S listened curiously. She didn't strike him as the careful driver type, and as soon as she cleared the building, he heard the screech he had expected.

Anemone smiled in her warm but weary way. "It's good to see you're well."

She placed a hand at his back before he could respond and ushered him toward the infirmary area. The tarps were still burned and filled with holes, but the cots had been replaced.

"You've been through a lot," she said, soft enough for only him to hear. "I'm sorry...and thank you."

The words tasted like acid, but he forced himself to be honest with her. "I didn't destroy the Tower. A2, at the top she..."

"It wouldn't have opened without you," she interrupted sternly but politely and gestured for him to lie down. "Whatever you need, don't hesitate to ask."

"Yeah..." he mumbled lamely. The misplaced gratitude was one thing, but the insistent kindness was hard for him to stomach. "Are you... treating me like this because you saw the YoRHa data...?"

"I'm extending an arm to a fellow soldier in need," she said without batting an eye. "You have my respect. Never my pity."

"Sorry..."

"It's fine. I was worried you might…" Her lips pressed together, and she held in whatever she meant to say. Instead, she squeezed his shoulder reassuringly and left him to his repair. "I hope you'll live on, 9S."

He watched her go with a bitter smile. She had a very familiar way of saying a lot by saying very little. Only with Anemone it felt intentional rather than sweetly clumsy.

"Initiate Maintenance Mode."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

* * *

The hacking space is normal. White walls with no sign of viral activity. Motor, aural, and visual systems lay before 9S in neat rows. He checks each impersonally but with uncharacteristic diligence. Maintenance will be important from here on out, and he can't afford to treat it like a tedious chore. The decay in his processing speed is not primarily hardware related, but a fluid change-out will do him good. The external maintenance process of his pod will take care of that.

He delves deeper until he arrives at his memory area.

It feels small. He had not realized just how accustomed he became to the machine network and its vast systems all interconnected to the point of near-infinity. The curious, analytic part of him whispers that technically that was his home network, given the nature of the black box.

He ignores the thought and delves deeper still.

Unprocessed memories clutter the core of his personality data. He can barely make out the fractured white shape through the noise. It is collapsed inward on itself and stands only in the same sense that many ruined structures in the city still stand. There is nothing he can do about it. No deeper hack, no magic fix.

Massive but unintelligible pieces of his time in the tower float by him, blotted with phantom shades of black where the logic virus had muted or magnified his emotions. He forces them into order while never looking directly at them. They are ugly and painful to the touch, but they are his memories. Proper processing will take time, but for now it's fine so long as they aren't in his way.

The memory of V is the last. It is silent save for V's voice and the click of his cane, all other aural information irrelevant. Opposing tingles of fear and warmth race through 9S and again he is overcome with an unbearable longing for humanity. He leaves the unprocessed memory adrift.

"Humans need a lot of water too right?" he asks the void, knowing the pod can hear. This is likely the only way they can discuss V in camp at all without being overheard.

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"Is V going to be able to drink from any of the local streams?"

"HYPOTHESIS: MACHINE FISH IN LOCAL WATER SUPPLY MAY POSE A HEALTH RISK."

"Hmm… There's none at the oasis. We probably can't take V there through that huge sandstorm though..."

He trails off as he becomes aware of additional noise. There are no more unprocessed memories. The noise emanates from the jumbled heap of his personality data. As he closes in, one voice becomes clear. It is low, feminine. Infuriatingly familiar—and painfully tender.

"Don't worry...I'll take care of everything."

* * *

9S jolted awake into a motionless body.

"ALERT: MAINTENANCE MODE STILL ACTIVE."

"What was that?" he demanded over their connection. "I heard... A2."

"...AFFIRMATIVE."

"Why?!"

"HYPOTHESIS: MEMORY CONVERGENCE DUE TO COMBAT HACKING OF YORHA UNIT A2 AND SUBSEQUENT CURATIVE HACKING OF UNIT 9S."

"So that noise was...her memories?"

"UNKNOWN. BOTH UNITS WERE ACTIVE WITHIN THE MACHINE NETWORK DURING THE FINAL EXCHANGE."

"Let me up, let me up right now!"

"SUSPENDING MAINTENANCE MODE."

He shot up and swung his legs over the side of the cot. The heated pulse in his chest slowly died down only to be replaced by shivers in his arms. Eventually, he realized his over-tight grip on the frame and rubbed at his wrists.

"Were you almost done?" he asked feebly.

"MAINTENANCE 89% COMPLETE."

Eleven percent wasn't the end of the world... but he couldn't risk it. He dropped back to the cot with an exaggerated sigh. "Fine, fine… Resume maintenance mode."

He entertained himself by looking through the pod's index of old-world data. Medicine, fashion, biology… There was a lot to learn, and more to do.

"Mark the location of my weapons on the map," he ordered. More energetically, he added. "And do a scan for safe-to-use containers. Maybe I can just go get water for him. Or would that be weird? Will he think I'm treating him like a baby?"

"ALERT: UNIT 9S' CONVERSATION PATTERNS ARE BECOMING ERRATIC."

"Are not! Or…okay, I guess, I just…don't want to upset him. We got off to a bad start and I wanna make a good impression. Come on, Pod, help me out."

"ANALYSIS: OLD WORLD DATA SUGGESTS IT WAS A COMMON AND SOCIALLY BENEFICIAL CUSTOM TO WELCOME A NEW MEMBER OF THE COMMUNITY WITH PREPARED FOODS."

"I guess that's not all that different from all the materials we got when we first came here… Alright! After we pick up my stuff, let's look for one of those rare boars. And water from the oasis. Maybe we can even find some of those eagle eggs!"

He scarcely noticed the 11% pass.


	7. Selfhood's Joy

V paced an idle, irregular route around the roof. In front of him, the pod drifted with its screen still up and operational even though he was no longer reading. He had already absorbed the details of YoRHa, the recent summary of the conflict, and, most interestingly, the Gestalt reports.

Humans separating their souls from their bodies wasn't a novel concept. Not given his own birth. It interested him more that they had managed it on a mass scale, and more still that they had done it to escape a disease brought to them by some sort of extra-dimensional event. To suddenly exist in another dimension, even one similar enough to his own to contain a bible, was much easier for him to believe than that he alone had been brought thousands of years into the future. It was the way the report spoke about the decade between 2004 and 2014. His memory—Vergil's memory—from that time was spotty and blood-stained, but surely he would have taken note of humans turning into salt.

Or maybe he wouldn't have.

The edge of confusion had fallen away over the long hours and left peace that bordered on boredom in its place. Similarly, V had grown weary of considering his elsewhere self. Without the shadow of death, the threat of Urizen, or his duty to make right his own foolish choices, what reason was there to think or act with Vergil in mind?

A shape beneath the table caught his eye. Glasses. Sleek, black and, upon retrieval, not actually corrective. They were surprisingly clean, and he sat them on the bridge of his nose.

"REPORT: TEXT SIZE CAN BE ALTERED AS NECESSARY TO ACCOMMODATE VISUAL DEFECTS."

"I'm sure it can," said V with a faint chuckle. "But I'm merely enjoying my own good mood."

He sat the glasses back down and looked up to the shifting rays coming through the thinning clouds. "What more can you tell me about maso?"

"MASO-RELATED RESEARCH WAS HIGHLY CLASSIFIED." The screen retracted, and the pod efficiently clicked back into a simple box shape. "DATA IS LIMITED."

"The research doesn't interest me. I wish to know if it still exists."

The silent seconds stretched, and the stretch became a yawn, and the yawn became a vast and empty pit, but V remained patient. He had come to learn that the amount of time it took to fulfill a data request reflected the data's obscurity.

"MASO SOURCED FROM 'DRAGON' LIKELY STILL ATMOSPHERICALLY PRESENT. CORRUPT MASO FROM SOURCED FROM 'GIANT' DESTROYED SOMETIME DURING THE 33RD CENTURY. PROBABILITY OF SUBJECT V CONTRACTING WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME: 0%. END REPORT."

He began to laugh, gently at first, but the longer he went on, the more openly it came. He hooked the head of his cane around the pod and pulled it close enough to take its tiny alloy fingers in hand. The pod's antennae stood, but it went along with the blithe outburst and allowed itself to be pulled along in relaxed twirls.

Maso particles were the catalyst that set off everything that had happened in this world. For all the trouble it caused, humans had still managed to make use of it. It fueled their Gestalt Project, it fueled the development of their androids, of certain pod programs; it even fueled weapons development that Pod had not been able to expand on.

V suspected it was also fueling him.

Wouldn't that be a just reward? Expelled along with Vergil's nightmares, born from the act of being cast off, weak and intended for death so that there would be nothing but power left. And not only had he re-united, not only had he righted his wrong, but then he was transported to a place where he might taste what it meant to thrive. As himself.

Through some whim of serendipity, V got to have that which Vergil chased but never tasted: **Triumph.**

"CONFIRMATION REQUEST: DANCING?"

" 'Affirmative'." He gently spun the pod round before releasing it into the air, where it continued to turn on its own.

"REPORT: ENJOYABLE."

"Gross, " Griffon interrupted, yawning noisily from his perch atop the table. "Can we get on with whatever needs getting on with, preferably without you two getting it on? I'd love to watch you flirt, really, it's fascinating, but I would love it a lot more if we had a plan. You have a plan after all that, don't you?"

"_Think in the morning, act at noon._ Best we settle for the oncoming night and make decisions tomorrow."

"NEGATIVE. DUE TO PLANETARY TIDAL LOCK, THIS SECTOR NO LONGER EXPERIENCES NIGHT CYCLES."

V shared a blank look with Griffon, who was quick to shuffle around, go back to sleep, and leave V to figure it out by himself. He shrugged and slung his cane over his shoulder.

"Alright... Let's start from the top."


	8. Little Clod of Clay

9S ascended the ladder in high spirits and high leaps. Being fully operational felt great. Knowing he would see V again soon felt great. His pack was heavy with boar meat, he had found a nice bottle to hold water in, and his average hacking time for simple machines was back down to .448 seconds. Still rusty by his own standards, but within acceptable time.

He was going to see a human!

The top floor felt like it took forever to reach and yet arrived far too soon. His head was overflowing with things to say and his chest was full of nervous fluctuations as he trotted into the daylight. V was leaning on his cane with his back to 9S, distracted by the steady drone of Pod 042's voice.

"REPORT: UNIT 9S AND POD 153 HAVE RETURNED."

He hadn't expected Pod 153 to announce him like that and quickly made the effort to look friendly.

"Hey there boy-bot," said Griffon

9S' smile faltered. "Is that bird talking?"

"AFFIRMATIVE," said Pod 042. "THIS IS SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON."

"I'm not a damn support unit!"

V held out his arm with a playful smirk. "Aren't you?"

Griffon grumbled but still fluttered over to the offered perch. "Congrats on not looking like you rolled out of a garbage dump, kid. Might wanna lose the blindfold though, probably a hazard."

"Oh, it's just a visor! I can see just fine." He crept closer on suddenly timid feet. Griffon was massive up close—maybe he actually could carry off an android. "Did you uhm...learn what you were hoping to...V?"

"I did," V said. "Your maintenance seems to have gone well."

9S caught the subtle shift in V's grip on the cane. His eyes were looking just over 9S' shoulder. At the hilt of Cruel Oath.

"Yeah. I… uhm…" He dropped his pack. His flustered fingers dug in, nearly tearing the contents in their haste. They gripped the bottle first. It was a deep green color with an elegant ripple. He had found it in the castle, and a bit of fresh rubber easily stopped the spout.

"I brought water from the oasis," he blurted. "I heard humans need a lot of water, so I'll try to find another bottle sometime!"

V's wary expression faded, and his brows raised.

9S smiled in earnest, spurred on by the positive—or at least not negative—reaction. "I also brought food! You need food too right?"

"YoRHa know how to cook?"

"Uh…well…No. But Pod 153 told me the minimum internal temperature to kill bacteria in meat, we just…might have…" His voice dropped. "I didn't want to take too long in case you were hungry, and Pod said humans welcome each other with food, and I didn't think you'd be able to take on a boar by yourself—"

"9S."

He jumped to his feet so quickly he nearly dropped the bottle. "Yes!"

"Come here."

Up close, he finally grasped how tall V was. Even leaning on the cane, he was easily a head over 9S. Though the haughty look that 9S hated was gone, it was still daunting to be looked down at and he noted he was unconsciously flexing his feet inside his shoes.

It wasn't like him to get so flustered. Why couldn't he calm down? His hardware was fully functional, his internal systems were good—was it the damage to his personality data? Or did humanity have that much priority in his programming?

V's fingers tapped at his cane. "Do you really believe I'm human?"

9S' vision darkened. Memories processed and unprocessed jostled within him, all his earlier work undone and cluttering his other systems. The weight of every machine and every android he had ever killed pressed down on him and his personality data trembled. It couldn't take any more. If V wasn't human, it would give up and shatter and there would be nothing left of him.

He crossed his arms and made a show of thinking about it. "Well, you're not an android or a machine and you're organic, so..."

V extended his hand, and a subtle twitch of his fingers beckoned 9S to take it. "Wilt thou believe without experiment?"

The change of syntax and the lilt of recitation didn't register. All 9S heard was an offer of proof that seeped in and stirred his curiosity from its sleep. It rose up, ravenous and ready to repeat every fatal mistake it had made in the past, the same beast it had ever been. If V was human, he couldn't pass up an invitation to do a little first-hand study.

The dry air on the biosynthetic skin of his fingers was a new, almost ticklish sensation. He had never taken his gloves off before, that he could recall. Not for anyone, not for any reason.

Not even for 2B.

Pores. Fingerprints. Wrinkles. Sweat. Winding veins under pale skin. Yielding skin over thin, bony fingers. The halting rhythm of blood pushed by a beating heart. Fine hairs barely felt and barely seen. Angular wrists, angular elbows, angular shoulders. Tiny capillaries that spread like branches of electricity over the whites of his eyes. An overall form that was jutting, crooked, and insubstantial compared to the sleek, highly-optimized, and condensed YoRHa units.

Androids resembled their human creators, but if someone designed V, it wasn't to win battles, much less a war. There were too many minor, meaningless imperfections. Too many odds and ends that served no purpose.

"You're real," 9S said unsteadily. "You're human."

"Deliberately, one could say." He tapped his cane against 9S' chest. "I hope that puts your anxiety to rest."

"M-my what?"

"Oh boy…" Griffon scoffed and flew over 9S' head. "You've been strugglin to talk to V without almost jumping out of your shorts every time he says 'boo', kid. Now that you've held hands and stared into each other's eyes, we can all relax, yeah?"

"More or less." V gestured toward the table. "Bring your spoils and let us see how much you have to learn about humans, little lamb."

9S rushed to go back for his pack. When he turned he was surprised to find V hadn't moved. He was right where he had been, standing idle with a small, patient smile. The wary grip on his cane had relaxed, and his eyes were lowered.

For at least that moment, it didn't matter if V was human, how much 9S' programming might or might not be controlling him, or whether his existence had any meaning.

He was happy just to run to someone who was waiting for him.


	9. Dance with the Devil

The combination of technical intelligence and well-meaning innocence that must have led both 9S and Pod 153 to conclude that cooking a lump of meat with a high-intensity laser was a reasonable course of action rendered V speechless.

"Is it bad?"

V glanced aside at the android. From his up-cast face to the frown on his slightly agape mouth, 9S radiated both the desire to do well and disappointment that he hadn't.

To think, he had been concerned that the blindfold might make 9S unreadable.

"No, no~" Griffon sweetly mocked. " That's some 5-star cuisine you got there."

"A carrion bird would think so," said V, waving off the appetite-spoiling scent of charcoal and boar musk. "Eat up."

Griffon answered with an exaggerated wretch.

"Damn..." 9S mumbled. He bounded toward the edge of the roof with determined energy. "I'll try again!"

V swerved smoothly around the edge of the dining table and held his cane out across 9S' path. "Wait. Instruction may yield better results. I will go with you."

"I don't think that's a good idea... It's dangerous down there."

V peered down at the swath of low grass and young trees. The open land was dotted with wandering animals, but perhaps it might be best to find a stream instead. He had seen small fish—surely that meant larger ones were available. "I made it here alone. I can only fare better with your assistance."

"Well yeah but... You didn't actually engage anything, right?"

"Your point?"

"You don't know what you're up against," 9S insisted. "The animals are all enormous, and really strong. And there's machines everywhere. You should stay up here where it's safe."

Such solicitousness from a stranger was odd. Nero and the others often suggested he rest his failing body, or back down from excessive danger, but never once had they actively tried to cloister him away for his weakness.

"...You think I'll die," he realized.

9S flinched. "I think you'll get hurt. I know what I'm up against and I can just undergo repairs if I get damaged." He rubbed fretfully at his sleeves. "You can't."

The genuine but misplaced concern was charming, in a childlike sort of way. 9S, knowing no better, thought V only human. An irreplaceable and easily damaged existence. And one that was all that remained of the reason for his own creation.

It would be a waste, but this wasn't a problem V was willing to entertain. A boar would make for a fine head upon the proverbial pike.

"I suppose it would be unreasonable to expect your indifference to my comings and goings given the circumstances..." V stepped up onto the roof's edge and lifted his arm. "Allow me to court your confidence instead."

Griffon caught him as he leaped and carried him easily down to the street. 9S landed with a heavy thump beside him. His sword vanished from his back and materialized at the ready just in front of his hands.

"Fancy way to hold a weapon," Griffon observed, more curious than snarky. "Is that an android thing?"

"It's a me thing," 9S answered defensively. "I'm not a combat model, I just...taught myself to fight."

"Well, that's a load off my mind. I didn't want to be the one to say it, but you look like even more of a wuss than V. Small wonder you guys have been at war for 5000 years if you were the latest elite war-mech."

9S' mouth twisted and he held out his free hand toward a nearby machine. A faint golden circle appeared in front of his fingertips, and scarcely a second later, the tiny machine halted, performed a clumsy bow, and exploded fantastically.

"Impressive display..." said V, sliding a piece of shrapnel out of his path. "What is your model, if that was not combat?"

"Scanner. Made for intel gathering and infiltration."

"And lacking the ability to wield a weapon is fundamental design for you?"

"For scanners in general." He lifted his chest and raised his chin toward Griffon. "I'm top of the line, so going outside my model's limits wasn't much of a challenge for me."

V smiled. Under that fawning surface was quite an immodest spirit. It stirred a certain restlessness in V. Ideally, he would not have revealed his capabilities so quickly, but now he was eager to see what this ruined earth could throw at him. To know what 9S knew. And if he needed to fight an android, perhaps it was best he observe the top of the line in action.

His stomach loudly reminded him to worry about practical problems before getting ahead of himself.

9S tilted his head. "Are you ok? what was that?"

"Hunger." He eyed a boar rooting around the bottom of a bush and moved toward it.

"ANALYSIS:" said Pod 153. "SUBJECT V'S CHANCE OF SUCCESS IS UNACCEPTABLY LOW. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD SUBJUGATE WILDLIFE."

"Your data is limited." He glanced back under his long lashes. "Watch and learn."

The boar danced and squealed as Griffon soared ahead and opened fire. Wherever it turned to run, he was there, pocking the earth and its hide with his shots. Denied the opportunity to flee, it loosed and agitated snort and turned on its attacker, but no matter how it tossed and kicked, Griffon was never in its range. It could not reach the source of its torment. By the time Griffon returned to V's side, it was beyond self-preservation. It saw something it could attack and charged.

"Come."

Shadow erupted from beneath V's feet in a cloud of black dust. To the boar's credit, it didn't flinch or hesitate. It made it that much easier for her to aim for the centerline.  
Several hundred pounds of muscle and bone were still only muscle and bone no matter how much rage drove it. There was never a chance it would so much as slow her guillotine down.

The boar, split neatly in half, skidded to a stop at V's feet.

On the other side, Shadow stretched and seeped beneath the spilled blood. She re-materialized beside V and rubbed briefly against his thigh before padding toward 9S.

V smiled at the transfixed, open-mouthed android. "She doesn't bite."

"She split a boar in half!" 9S exploded. "That bird has ammunition!"

"Electricity, actually."

"That's not normal!" He paused and looked to Pod 153 for assurance. "It's not, right?!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. AVIAN AND FELINE LIFEFORMS ARE NOT FULLY ORGANIC."

"You assumed a normal human arrived under such abnormal conditions?" asked V with a half-smile.

9S' mouth moved but didn't find an answer before he gave in to Shadow's insistent nudges and cautiously began to pet her. "Does she… Er, do you... talk too?"

"She doesn't do human speak," said Griffon. "That's my territory."

"I don't get it, what are you?"

"Don't worry about it too much, boy-bot. You only found out a human existed a few hours ago, the details might be a bit much for your circuits to take in. Just know that we have an arrangement with V. He takes care of us; we take care of him."

"So it is. Now you know, and you can set your mind at ease." V strolled by 9S and patted his shoulder. His voice sank soft enough to lull but low enough to menace as he leaned in close to his ear. "That rooftop is my perch, but I will not allow it to become my cage."

9S gave a faint, slack-jawed nod. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Good." He gestured over his shoulder to the boar. "Cut what you will and leave the rest to the insects. In the future, we will choose less wasteful prey."


	10. Data Exchange 1

**Pod 153:** Pod 153 to Pod 042. Requesting exchange.

**Pod 042:** Pod 042 to Pod 153. Request accepted.

**Pod 153:** Status report of recently identified human 'V'.

**Pod 042:** Subject V is currently resting with Support Unit Shadow. No problems detected.  
**Pod 042:** How is Unit 9S?

**Pod 153:** No repair detected in personality data of Unit 9S in spite of improved mental state in response to human presence. Proposal: Pod 042 should propose formal ownership transfer to establish a means of communication between Unit 9S and Subject V.

**Pod 042:** Agreed. However, subject V does not have the necessary interface for full tactical assistance. Support options will remain limited to information.

**Pod 153:** About that. Unit 9S does not have the authority to release classified YoRHa files. Why did Pod 042 relay that data to Subject V?

**Pod 042:** Subject V exists outside of established command chain. No protocols were breached. However, I have been thinking. If subject V's existence became known, there is likelihood of command fracture and potential repetition of the Rebel Conflict.  
**Pod 042:** Multiple scenario analyses show high potential for aggression against both Unit 9S and subject V himself.

**Pod 153:** This pod also analyzed the projected scenario and came to the same conclusion. Proposal: Pod 042 should prevent subject V from coming into contact with local resistance androids.

**Pod 042:** Agreed.  
**Pod 042:** ...  
**Pod 042:** Pod 153...  
**Pod 042:** Does V's presence represent a need for alteration to the YoRHa project?

**Pod 153:** …  
**Pod 153:** We lack the authority to make that decision. YoRHa final phase will proceed as intended when parameters are met.

**Pod 153:** Until that time, we will continue to provide support.


	11. Curiousity

9S kicked his heels against the side of the building and replayed the footage of the previous day for at least the 10th time. What he saw and what made sense had yet to overlap, but that didn't stop him from getting absorbed in every tiny detail. Griffon's pellets of electricity and Shadow's seamless shift between shapes and states of matter riled his curiosity so much he could barely stand it. V's markings, however, were what most enthralled him.

They were at their thickest when 9S first met him, then a little lighter the second time, and a little lighter again when he called Shadow for the kill. It was hard to tell from behind, but he still had a few dark markings left even with both Shadow and Griffon at his side. If the connection was as linear as it appeared, there had to be at least one more of his 'support units' in there.

The feeling as he imagined thousands of permutations of this third unit had little similarity to his usual curious excitement-it was far hungrier.

The tick of V's cane interrupted his thoughts. He cancelled the playback, and discreetly closed his display.

"Morning," he greeted.

V squinted puffy, dark-ringed eyes at him. He didn't look at all like the poised, borderline snobbish figure 9S had met the day before. Sleep had emphasized his bent posture, and he leaned heavily on his cane to compensate as he stumbled toward the table and sank into the empty chair.

"Hey?" 9S swung his legs back over the edge of the rooftop. "Are you...ok?"

V scowled and dragged the remains of the water toward him. He drained the entire thing, swept his hair back, and heaved a vast sigh as his head dropped to the table.

9S tugged Pod down close and murmured. "Is he sick?"

"I'm fine," V rumbled. "I'll thank you to not to jump to foolish conclusions."

"I can't help it! I don't have a lot of data on humans, I only met you yesterday, and you're acting like an entirely different person."

"I'm just groggy, 9S."

"Groggy..." herepeated skeptically. "And that's a normal thing for you?"

"Rest and I are infrequent bedfellows." There was a bitter edge to his voice; one that didn't seem targeted at 9S. "Though it has rarely been this elusive."

"ANALYSIS:" said Pod 153. "CERTAIN HUMAN PROCESSES WERE LINKED TO DAY-NIGHT CYCLES CURRENTLY ABSENT IN THIS SECTOR DUE TO TIDAL LOCK. PROPOSAL: NEXT REST PERIOD SHOULD TAKE PLACE IN LOW-LIGHT SETTINGS."

9S' brows scrunched. He contemplated whether humans would have been able to come back successfully if they had actually been on the moon. Peace would not have changed the altered ecosystem. There were so many odds and ends to human well-being beyond physical self-defense—more than food and water and shelter, too.

Humans were way more fragile than he thought.

"I guess it won't help to go back to sleep, huh? How about we go fishing?"

V slowly lifted his head looked over at him with profound weariness. "You can fish?"

"I mean, the Pods can."

"I am compelled...to ask how that skill is useful to you."

"PODS ARE EQUIPPED FOR RETRIEVAL OF ANY USEFUL SUBMERGED RESOURCES, INCLUDING MARINE LIFEFORMS."

"Guess that answers that. Since it is for me that you're bothering, I'll accompany you." He hoisted himself back onto his feet with a slightly less expansive sigh and pointed east. "There?"

9S didn't even have to look to know that he was suggesting the stream near the resistance camp. "That spot's bad. Just follow me, I know a good place."

"I don't mind following, but I do mind not knowing where I'm going."

"Does it really make a difference to tell you where we're going if you don't know where anywhere is?"

"Knowing nothing means I have everything to learn."

9S hummed approvingly. That was a very scanner-like sentiment. That weird way of talking V had was kicking in, so the grogginess was hopefully out of his system until the next morning.

Maybe he could turn this into an opportunity to see what else V was capable of.

* * *

"I can't help but be grateful it's been thousands of years," said V. "I have yet to go a day without entering a pipe."

9S glanced down at the runoff. "I guess they aren't usually the cleanest. Don't worry though; this one only goes in for a few meters."

He led the way to the elevator tucked neatly off to the right. V didn't say anything while they waited. From the corner of 9S eye, he could just make out an expression that was neither surprised nor interested when it finally arrived. His mind was elsewhere.

Elevators must have been just as boring to wait for and boring to ride in in V's time.

"Why this particular location?" V asked.

"No machine fish in the water," he explained. "The only other place that doesn't have any is the oasis out desert. I get your water from there, but Pod said anything I caught would probably be bad by the time I made it all the way back to the city."

"Why would the machines make fish?"

Another predictable question. The accepted theory sat on the tip of 9S' tongue and he knew the exact tone of casual wonder he wanted to use, but the words never came. His mind was elsewhere: Focused on not clenching his fists, and on keeping his expression neutral.

The aliens wanted to damage human food sources? What a joke. From the first invasion, there weren't any humans to starve.

"Who knows," he answered flatly as the door opened. "There's no meaning to what machines do."

Together they stepped into the clammy darkness of the caves. The doors droned shut behind them, and the both pods clicked on their lights.

"I haven't been here since the tower fell," 9S warned quietly. "There were strong machines here before. I don't know what they'll be like now."

V smirked. "I'll stay close."

That was either a patronizing jab or genuine anticipation. 9S disliked both possibilities.

Distant echoes murmured from beyond the pale podlights, like the voices of the clammy currents that wrapped around them and beckoned them in. Only their footsteps and the shuffling whispers of their clothing answered.

Fires appeared in the dark, as well as a familiar yellow spark. Two electromagnetic shields, a few stubbies, some drill-equipped spheres, and a stacker unit with several guns attached.

"I'll hack the shield units first," 9S whispered. "You deal with the small units and the drills and I'll take the tall one in the back as fast as I can. Watch the guns; machines don't fire traditional ammo, but it's a pain to dodge their shots if they clog up the field."

Griffon materialized just ahead of the pod. "Thanks for the tip, boy-bot. We got this."

9S dashed ahead and drew their attention. The shield unit hacking patterns were tricky but not difficult. He had practiced them hundreds of times, and it took only seconds to down both. He didn't expect V to have even begun with his targets, which made the burst of lightning as he exited hacking space that much more dazzling.

The stubbies fell over and even the drill units dropped to the ground, not destroyed but disabled by the strong shock.

Strange violet light bounced off the damp walls. No sooner did 9S search for the source than it was suddenly on the other side of the tunnel. One by one, the downed machines began to detonate. 9S focused ahead rather than play catch up. Over the final enemy, he caught V wink into existence and pierce the core of his target. The glow was emanating from his cane.

He didn't bother to ask the pod if that was normal. It had to be something similar to the overclock chip favored by combat models. How V was doing that without the assistance of any systems of overclock would have to wait.

The path to the stacked unit was clear, and it was focused on V. 9S darted in close before the barrels could reorient on him and threw his sword. Cruel Oath spun on-target, and the easily deconstructed unit fell to pieces and exploded.

Off to the side, V curiously trailed after a stray orb. It popped like a bubble at the touch of his cane.

He ran his hand over his cane and the glow vanished. "How much further?"

"Just up ahead where the light is. There's a straight drop down to the lake from there."

And, if 9S recalled correctly, an enemy type that would be a lot more of a challenge would be in their way. In the open, they were a pain. In this tight space, they would be lucky to come away unscathed. It was risky, but V was the one who insisted on not staying where it was safest.

He had to know more. He needed to know more.

The ground rumbled beneath their feet, and 9S' eyes lit with excitement behind his blindfold. A drill erupted from the tunnel wall above them. 9S dodged one way and Griffon carried V another. The rotating saws that made up the serpentine body sprayed loose earth, pelting them and obscuring their vision.

Another burst of electricity lit the cave. Griffon's attack did not have the same incapacitating effect it doled out on the smaller units. Shadow dived beneath it and burst into a mass of spikes. Some of the saws came free of the electromagnetic field that held them in place, but others sparked against her pins and needles until they shattered. At V's beckon, she limped back to his side.

For a moment, they were bathed in the golden glow of its core. The few saws that had been dislodged leapt back in line at the tail end, and it was as though no damage had been done at all.

"I see..." V purred. He stepped backward and Pod 042s flashlight clicked off.

9S whipped around, terrified at the notion of not knowing where V was in the dark, but he couldn't spare his attention. The enemy unit was taking up a majority of the already tight tunnel and winding in hard-to-predict coils as it sought 9S out. It took his complete concentration to dodge effectively, and without V to act as a distraction, there were no openings to hack in.

"Pod, switch to laser-based projectiles and open fire!"

A rapid hum-click over his shoulder preceded a winding beam of plasma that licked along the linked saws until it found the core and lit the tight corridor in white. The electromagnetic field wouldn't hold long against laser fire, he just had to keep pod in the right position relative to the core.

Words seeped from the darkness behind him in measured, predatory timbres. "And their sun does never shine, and their fields are bleak and bare, and their ways are filled with thorns. It is eternal winter there…"

"What are you-!"

Shadow leapt forward, guided to her prey by the light of the pod fire. Her head transformed into a thick black spike which pierced through the core and into the ceiling.

9S had never seen a linked unit be immobilized that way. The saws stuttered, spat, and sparked. The drill spun faster, the high-pitched whine of taxed hinges cutting through the cold silence of the cave. Dust rained on them as it dragged Shadow onward inch by inch.

What 9S saw next, he first interpreted as V using one of the pod's programs. However, the six spectral blades that circled the link-type machine core were not YoRHa design. They were canes—copies of V's cane, to be exact.

Shadow retracted her head spike. The canes pierced six times what she had pierced once. The core exploded. The links all followed suit in rapid succession, scattering their path in scorched metal and burning splashes of oil.

The light from Pod 042 clicked back on. V walked ahead to the waiting mouth of the cave and leaned over the edge. He hiked his cane up over his shoulder with a satisfied smile and waved his hand in an 'after you' gesture to 9S.

"It seems our way is clear."


	12. Blissful Death

Aside from a few scattered blocks of white carbon, the lake was exactly as 9S remembered it. Whatever subterranean flow fed the reservoir did not disturb the upper waters. Save for where Pod 153 bobbed along in wait, there were scarcely any ripples to disturb the reflective surface.

The deathly stillness comforted him somehow, enough to make him forget he was kind of bored. The caves were unchanged by events on the surface. It felt like an altogether different world.

One where he could think properly.

V leaned limp against a wayward bit of carbon debris. With the podlights off to avoid attracting unwanted attention, the only light source was the faded daylight that shone down from an opening at least half a kilometer above. He had fallen asleep almost as soon as he sat down.

A swell of protectiveness washed over 9S but by the time it permeated him, it was guilt. He had endangered a human—the **only** human—to feed his own curiosity. How could he have been so stupid?

His fingers sank into his crossed arms. The highs and lows of caring for a human were brand new and already old enough to be annoying.

It was all the same. YoRHa was gone and still he was punished for his curiosity. Only this time there was no one to kill him. No terrible truths to undo himself with. The only punishment was guilt for not doing the one single job that spared him his intended obsolescence. Guilt just as irrational and disconnected from him as some of the things he felt when he looked at V.

The relief and the desire to protect V? Those might be his or they might not be. The craving to know everything about V? For all the good it did him, curiosity came from his personality data, not his other programming. That was him.

But the sense of belonging and the oozing, dreamlike sensation that everything was okay? That wasn't him. That didn't come from any place in him that he claimed as his own.

And 9S wasn't so hypnotized by that forced feeling of fulfillment that he believed V's presence changed anything.

V was just a lone man. The benefits of his presence were real to 9S but that didn't mean they were tangible. He couldn't rebuild humanity, he couldn't rebuild the Earth, and he couldn't change anything in any way that mattered. He was going to die like everyone else. It stirred slight sympathy—after all, V hadn't asked to be there any more than 9S had asked to be made. But he was human, and they aged, and they died by their design. It was only a matter of time.

Griffon and Shadow were much stronger than he thought. The electrical discharge from the fore alone meant V would never be threatened by any of the compact units, and if Shadow could pin something as powerful as a link-type in place, she could probably shred right through any of the medium machines. Who knew what the third one was capable of?

It felt like acid in his veins, but he had accepted that 'a matter of time' was going to be later rather than sooner.

The pod bobbed and broke the surface of the water with a weighty silver fish in its grasp. "REPORT: CARP."

Another swell of pride at successfully finding something V could use. At being something V could use.

It felt fantastic.

It disgusted him.

Deep within a miraculously intact kernel of identity that had nothing to do with his programming or his amorphous but enduring hate, it quietly pleased him to have done something good for someone who was relying on him.

The strain of processing so much contradiction would eventually take him beyond what repairs could fix. If they didn't, V's death would.

That was okay. He had always planned to die anyway; it was just going to take a lot longer than letting the elements rot him out among the tower rubble. He had to stay at V's side. Not for V's sake, nor for his own, and not for a second to appease whatever abhorrent algorithm lurked beyond the reach of his hacking and doled out pleasure or punishment as it saw fit.

"Pod 042?" he called, pressing a finger to his lips for silence as the pod came near. "I'm going to go back up and pick up some of those torches the machines were carrying. Stay with V. Don't let anything happen to him."

Pod 042 flashed his antennae in silent affirmation of the order. A display appeared between them.

Analysis, it read. Unit 9S may frequently need to be away from Subject V in order to procure supplies, undergo maintenance, etc. Proposal: Support Unit Pod 042 should be permanently assigned to Subject V to provide a constant channel of communication and ensure Subject V has support in the event of an emergency.

"Is that possible without a YoRHa ID circuit?"

With Unit 9S' permission, it should remain within acceptable protocols.

"Then do it. If you run into an issue, I'll deal with it when I get back."

With Pod 153 in tow, 9S made his way back toward the upper tunnels.

As long as V lived, it spat in the face of whoever had cursed 2B to repeat their agonizing cycle over and over for nothing. As long as V lived, even if it tore 9S down and ultimately ruined him, he could believe that her suffering had not been pointless.

It was for her, and her alone.


	13. The Unknown Shore

V stood under a severed corner of roofing and shielded his eyes. Strong sunlight bathed the ruins. The clouds had cleared while they were underground and bleached remains of human structures shone bright, but the remnants of the tower reflected the light from their stark white faces with ruthless efficiency.

"I think I preferred the caves," he said, wiping stinging tears from his eyes. "But I have business to attend to."

From above, 9S poked his head over the edge of the makeshift shelter. "You do?"

"The distance between me and my destination is considerable. If I'm to make a second crossing…" He pointed his cane across the crater to a different pipe. "I should seek to know how I made the first."

"Oh... You want to go back to the coast."

V glanced up at his companion. Yesterday's over-zealousness had settled down as he hoped, but strange clouds lingered over that face.

The pods were simple by nature. 9S cultivated simplicity and wore it much the same way he wore the blindfold. Futile, if his desire was secrecy. V had seen when they first met that 9S had the eyes of someone who welcomed death.

"You seem displeased."

"It's not that..." He fell silent, and the clouds over his brow gathered only thicker as his head bowed toward the earth.

What a curious choice to impart a tool of war any feeling at all.

"I would be glad for a scanner's eye, but you do not have to accompany me." He raised his arm and Griffon's third of tattoos shifted and grayed. "I know the way."

9S all but tumbled from his perch to snatch V's coat. "Wait! I'll go."

"You're sure?"

"Yeah." He released V's coat and looked tight-lipped across the rubble. "I'll go with you..."

* * *

The coastline remained gray despite the clear skies over the inner ruins, and V's mood grayed in kind. The broken, half-sunken roads and eroded architecture might as well have been entirely underwater for all they offered in the way of clues. The junky clutter ancient road signs, car parts, and mildewed remains of furniture that must have fallen from the pitching buildings to rot in the street hid no secrets. The most V learned was that the missile he had dismissed as probably just a relic was very much still armed.

In short, nothing. No traces of demonic energy, no change in anything 9S or the pods could detect, and nothing that caught Griffon or Shadow's attention. Not so much as an unusual weather pattern preceded or trailed V's appearance.

Worse, 9S was not focused on the task at hand. He was preoccupied instead with an anxiety whose source he declined to reveal. V didn't press him, though it frustrated him. He had remained practically at his heel during their entire search, but nothing struck him as out of place. Combing through the dust a second time would only waste energy.

"Let's go." He turned back inland. "There is nothing here."

"You go ahead," said 9S. "There's one more place here I want to look into."

V's brow furrowed. "Another dangerous place you wish me to keep clear of, I assume."

9S frowned and shook his head. "I know you're strong, but down there…" He hesitated. "Please just let me do this alone. I'll meet up with you back on the rooftop."

He didn't wait for permission to be granted or denied.

Neither did Griffon, who materialized at V's side and watched the android run off. "Whaddya think that was all about?"

V looked thoughtfully at Pod 042. It was effectively his now, and the order from 9S to provide him any information he desired still stood. It would have been simple to find out where he was going.

Instead he moved back down the long, jagged road the way they had come.

"Uhhh, V?" Griffon asked, fluttering after him. "Not to put too much pressure on you but we did the bit where we checked for clues and didn't find anything. What do we do now?"

A good question. For which he had no answers.

Dimensional particles that kept him whole and gave his feeble form strength. Humanity in a world where humans were just ghosts that preoccupied machines and androids alike. A pod that provided knowledge and single android who meant well but had something to hide.

All great assets, but he would need to take his time to reap the benefits of each.

"How many hours of reading did you have archived, Pod 042?"

"14,934."

"We will aim to make it shorter than that."

"What?" Griffon squawked incredulously. "Are you seriously thinking about going through that thing's entire archive? We'll be here forever!"

V slowed to a stop. A grave expression darkened his features, and his fingers pressed tight into the grooves of his cane. "That is… also a possibility."

A humid breeze ruffled his jacket and settled sticky salt onto his skin. Had he found the way home neatly tucked behind a waterfall or sitting in the surf, he doubted he would have gone home. The dilemma of this dead earth and its mechanical denizens didn't interest him. Their wars and their lies and their loss of purpose were their problems, and he had no plans to utilize his humanity if it didn't benefit him.

Yet it could not be ignored that this world tempted him.

Even if it was only because it was barren, it was tranquil. For him, such peace only existed in his mind as fragmented memories all but lost beneath the long struggle to survive. He had no reason to go return immediately and every reason to indulge in a few idyllic weeks to himself, as himself. The possibility of being unable to go back cast an unexpected shadow, but one he was quick to shrug off.

"The inevitable cannot be rushed nor delayed. If there is a way back, we will find it. If there isn't, we won't." He cracked a dour smile and resumed his pace. "Catching up on my reading is not the worst way to spend 2 years."

Griffon eyed him, but for once, he didn't say anything and quietly melted back into V's tattoos.

With only the wonderfully silent pod at his side, V's mind wandered to his new companion. 9S had given V no reason to distrust him thus far. Shadow was sharp when it came to killing intent, but she never stirred while they slept. That only meant 9S didn't want to harm him. As happy as he seemed to help V in whatever way he could, that didn't necessarily mean he shared V's goals.

That the first thing he met was an android whose model revolved around information was miraculous. It would have been too suspicious if 9S was also one of likely very few androids in this world that could find a human and be happy to help them leave.

He had nearly completed the hike back to the end of the road when the pod broke the silence. "QUERY: WHAT IS THE NATURE OF UNITS GRIFFON AND SHADOW? ARCHIVAL SEARCHES HAVE YIELDED MINIMAL RESULTS."

"You have quite the nosy streak," V teased.

"ALL PODS ARE INSTALLED WITH BASIC PERSONALITY TEMPLATES AND CONVERSATIONAL ABILITY. HOWEVER, THIS POD'S QUERY IS INTENDED TO INFORM BEST SUPPORT PRACTICES. SUBJECT V DOES NOT POSSESS AN FFCS OR IFF CIRCUIT, SO TACTICAL SUPPORT IN COMBAT MUST BE MADE AT THIS POD'S DISCRETION AND WITH CARE TO AVOID FRIENDLY FIRE."

"Aren't you considerate. I will tell you then…If you'll tell me something first."

"Proposal accepted."

V gestured to the approaching bend where the road curved inland. "Why is it that 9S was particularly tense when we passed that corner?"

"ANALYSIS: UNIT 9S MAY HAVE EXPERIENCED PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOMFORT DUE TO CRASH SITE PROXIMITY."

It wasn't the answer V expected.

"What crash site?"


	14. Echoes

At the bottom of an embankment was a battered mechanical shape that didn't resemble anything V had yet seen. The bottom half was submerged, the upper half crushed into the mud by tower debris. There was only a crooked pipe poking out to even signify it was there from above.

He slid carefully down the steep incline using his cane to steady himself. Like the dining table, the surface of the machinery was dusty but clearly new despite its combat damage. It had few signs of natural wear and tear. A slip of his fingers over a sleek corner showed a perfect matte black color beneath the dust. "Is this YoRHa technology?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. THIS WAS THE FLIGHT UNIT ASSIGNED TO THIS POD'S PREVIOUS OWNER, YORHA UNIT 2B."

V raised a brow and leaned in until he could identify something that looked like the back of a pilot seat pressed flat down into the muck. He sighed when he found it empty. "How did you come to be assigned to 9S?"

"REPORT: ...IT IS A LONG STORY."

The pod's sudden reticence caught V off guard. With the timeline to his return home stretched to a minimum measured in years, it behooved him to more about his new acquaintances. That 9S was uncommunicative was one thing, but to be dodged by the pod?

"It seems I tread in troubled streams." He peered closer at the interior in search of anything unusual. It was something they hadn't searched, and he wasn't about to pass it over out of sentiment.

Pod 042's antenna lifted and something inside the flight unit sputtered to life. A woman's voice fought through a din of static. Her speech hitched and gasped, words halting and apologetic as she stumbled toward the heart of her clearly final request.

"9S... The time I was able to spend with you..."

V's cane ended the message in sparks and smoke. He climbed back up the embankment, sparing a disdainful glance at the pod as he passed it by. It wasn't until he reached the other side of the broken road that he stopped and sat where the guardrails sagged and gave way to the murky sea.

The silent but intense attention of the pod tingled across his back. "QUERY: WHY DID SUBJECT V HALT PLAYBACK?"

"If that message already reached 9S, then there is no need for her bared heart to reach me as well." He rubbed absently at his knuckles. "I'm not the type to pry merely for prying's sake. I didn't ask you to do that."

"IT WAS RELATED TO SUBJECT V'S PREVIOUS QUERY. ADDITIONALLY, THIS POD BELIEVED IT WOULD HELP SUBJECT V UNDERSTAND UNIT 9S."

A dry laugh escaped through V's nose, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders.

Pod had specified he had a personality and the capacity for judgement calls, but V had expected that was limited to combat. Personal discretion was a very different matter. His motives remained too simple to be anything but honest, but he might not be above undesirable behaviors.

"You could have just said 9S inherited you from 2B."

"NEGATIVE. THE LAST ORDER OF UNIT 2B WAS TO SUPPORT ROGUE YORHA UNIT A2. UNIT A2'S FINAL ACTIONS INCAPACITATED BOTH HER AND UNIT 9S BEFORE COLLAPSING THE TOWER. THIS POD WAS TASKED WITH ENSURING THE SAFETY OF 9S AT THAT TIME."

The tower again... It was proving to be the epicenter of much more than the end of the most recent war.

V didn't really want more information, but he also didn't want to have to navigate this conversation again in the future. "Why did 2B give you to a rogue unit instead of 9S?"

The pod clicked open and a display appeared. An elegant female figure erupted mid-air from a crashing flight unit—the same that V could have crossed the road to see. Like 9S, her clothes were fully black and her hair pure white. While her body broke down due to virus infection, she fought her way through the tunnel, through the city, to a place where she could die alone. All to avoid passing her infection on to other androids. She overheated. Combusted. Her stumble became a limp, and her limp became a shamble. She pushed forward on whatever limbs would work as her pain-stricken voice turned tinny and metallic

While barely able to hold her sword, she was surrounded by other infected androids laughing in shrill, overlapping voices.

Her savior was not 9S, but an android that shared her face. A model so run down that her clothing had worn away to scratched and dusty scraps and the black creases between her joints showed. 2B's fading voice confirmed that this twin who cut the other androids down with practiced ease was A2.

2B's last words, her will, and her weapon were not left in the flight unit. They were left with A2, who showed her acceptance by taking 2B's life before the virus could.

As the red light faded from her eyes, she looked over her shoulder and a warm smile lifted her lips. She sighed, but the words carried on her final breath were cut off by the sudden end of the video.

The silence stretched on so wholly that even the splashes and whispers of the waves sounded muffled and distant. He too had stumbled on a crumbling body toward his own end. For himself. While 2B had done it for others. For 9S.

"Again," he said with a shaken voice. "You couldn't have just…told me that?"

"REPORT: PLAYBACK WAS THE MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS OF RELAYING DATA."

Pod 042 turned and clicked his claws, and V followed the gesture.

In the distance, he could just make out a bobbing white head atop pitch-black clothing.

* * *

"You're still here...?" 9S asked dully.

"I am," V answered without looking up from the sea. "Did you find anything?"

"No. Nothing. Sorry."

He looked over his shoulder. 9S looked even more sullen than when they'd parted. The apprehension had drained out of him, but in many ways he looked the same sad dredge as when V first saw him.

Perhaps even a measure worse. "You're injured."

9S clapped a hand to his head and smeared away the trickle of red fluid seeping from under his blindfold. "Oh. This is nothing."

"Take off the blindfold."

"It's really nothing; it's fine."

"It wasn't a request."

9S' mouth dropped open even as the rest of his body tensed. His fingers twitched and clenched, but ultimately he yielded. The skin over his temple was torn. Blood poured from beneath a filmy substance that had even V could recognize as sloppily applied.

He tapped his cane expectantly on the open ground to his right.

9S swung his legs over the guardrail and obediently sat in a sulky, cross-legged hunch. More than the mystery of why an android should bleed, V was drawn in by the powerless fury that radiated from 9S' eyes.

Perhaps it was because he had already seen himself in 2B's death march, but he found that expression repulsively familiar.

"The nano machines will take care of it," 9S grumbled. "It's just a scratch."

"Then why didn't you patch it properly?" 9S didn't answer and V turned back to the ocean, looking out at the smoking titan standing in the surf. "You were here, weren't you? When that creature was defeated."

"Did Pod 042 tell you that?" When V didn't dignify the petulant tone with a response, 9S rolled his eyes and tore off the badly applied barrier. "...Its name was Grün."

He held up his hand to Pod 153, who supplied him more of the substance in the form of a loose gel. "We were here to help protect a carrier out at sea for the Resistance. It rose up out of the ocean. Destroyed the carrier and everyone on it, dropped an entire YoRHa squadron into the sea. I had to ride one of those missiles directly into his mouth to kill it."

"I see." V leaned his chin onto his cane. "How old are you, 9S?"

The question took the android by surprise. "That doesn't really matter, does it? I was made, not born. I don't age."

That was true, and it was the problem. His makers could build him however they wished, but they chose…that. And the more V tried to reconcile that appearance with what he knew, the greater his irritation. "I'm asking why they built you with the mind and appearance of an adolescent."

9S' eyes shot open. Confusion and indignant embarrassment vied within them. "I'm not a child!"

"I haven't made up my mind about whether or not that's the case. However, I have come to... appreciate that in spite of your appearance, you must have many unpleasant memories you would rather not face."

"Are you...apologizing to me?"

"For what offense?" V asked nonchalantly. "You had the opportunity to stay behind and chose to come here anyway. I am acknowledging you for coming despite knowing it would cause you pain."

"Thanks," 9S said begrudgingly. "I guess…"

"That said…" V slid the tip of his cane under 9S' chin. "I was not anticipating physical pain to be a part of the matter. What happened?"

"Nothing I didn't deserve." He pushed halfheartedly at the cane and stared down at his stained blindfold. "I'm alright. I've endured worse than this."

V sighed and rose to his feet. He had enough to think about without fighting 9S for more answers. "I will take your word for it. In exchange, do not be so reckless. My time here will be… long, it seems. It will only be longer if I am without your assistance."

9S looked up at him like he had something to say, or maybe to ask. There was a flicker of feeble hope in his eyes. But he only gave a weak, apologetic smile and nodded.

"Sorry… I'll take better care of myself."


	15. Guilty Heart

9S was quiet while they trekked back to the ruins. No matter how many glances he stole, V's face was the same every time. Undisturbed, with his hooded eyes focused on where he was going. Hopefully, he was as unruffled as he looked. 9S hadn't meant to sound so grim, but the things he saw down in the coliseum...

He shook the thoughts from his head. It was fine. It was none of his business and he knew what he was getting into when he decided to show his face there.

Only when they finally made it back did 9S break his silence. "So… What are you intending to do now?"

V shot him a quick, high-browed glance, as though he'd forgotten he wasn't alone. "I need to understand what kind of information is in the pod's archives."

"Like a summary report?"

"NEGATIVE," said Pod 042, already unfolding into the largest display possible. "SUBJECT V IS REVIEWING THE COMPLETE INDEX FOR ARTICLES OF INTEREST."

"The whole index?" 9S circled around to V's side, leaning over to see if he was serious. "That's a really big job V. It'll take you forever."

"Pod's total archive is only two years' worth of continuous reading," V said matter-of-factually. "What is a week or even a month spent to whittle that down?"

"Whittle…?"

9S' face blanked as he realized just what V's plan was. He had to be crazy or underestimating just how much data it was; or both. It was so much data that even 9S, with his voracious appetite for new knowledge, found it overwhelming. V couldn't possibly process it all. Human error meant he was going to miss something. Maybe something silly, maybe something crucial. Did he even have a keyword in mind? A search term? Or was he just going to go through the index once just to rule out sure negatives?

9S didn't voice any of those concerns.

Instead, he turned his attention to the glass bottle sat on the dining table, as empty as when they'd left, and tucked it under his arm. "If you really mean it, you'll be at it awhile, so I'll go get more supplies."

V gave a distracted nod. He was already engrossed.

There was still a lot 9S didn't understand about humans, but he thought with a glow of pride that V really was like a scanner model.

* * *

Getting water was easy; getting one bottle of water at a time was inefficient and a pain that 9S thought better to deal with as soon as possible. The castle had given him a single intact bottle already. Logically, there was bound to be more somewhere in there.

He ignored the knight machines if he could afford to. They were still as bad-tempered as ever and he wasn't above fighting back if he needed to, he just didn't feel like killing them. Not if he didn't have to. Not today. It satisfied him enough to see the meat box lay at the bottom of the ravine like garbage in a pit as he crossed the castle bridge.

The fall of the tower had crushed a lot of the castle's stonework. Rooms that were impossible to access before now had plenty of sunlight spilling into them. The old pathways 9S knew were gone, but there was nothing left to discover in those rooms. He needed something new. Something like the tight stairwell he found behind a door he had never seen before.

"ALERT: STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY MAY BE COMPROMISED. ESCAPE FROM UNDERGROUND FLOOR UNLIKELY IN THE EVENT OF COLLAPSE."

"Y-yeah… I'll be careful."

The familiar tingle of inquisitiveness pricked along his fingertips. Mentally, he chided himself. Maybe getting so excited over new things was why V had called him a child. This was all to help him stay focused on his data scour, but how was 9S supposed to stay focused on that? Especially when completely new location data was opening in front of him. Anything could be at the bottom of those steps.

The stairwell turned in a steep spiral deep down into the earth and was collapsed at several spots. Most of them 9S squeezed through without too much trouble. One required a stressful wriggle through a gap between a massive pile of rubble and the ceiling while he alternated between rapid-fire prayers that the subtle tremors caused by his movement wouldn't collapse onto him and a smug sense of validation.

If he was built any bigger, he would never have gotten through that.

The narrow cone of podlight suddenly filtered out into a long, open hall. Rotted, collapsed wooden racks lined the walls and spilled hundreds of bottles out along the floor. Tattered cobweb veils swayed in air that had been stale for who knew how many thousands of years. Unlike the caves, it was warm. Sticky humidity settled on 9S, caking the dust onto his skin.

"What's this place?"

"REPORT: WINE CELLAR. LIKELIHOOD OF FINDING DESIRED MATERIALS HIGH."

9S hummed but didn't get his hopes up. Most of the bottles were broken or otherwise unusable. The ones that were still good didn't have wine in them. Just remnants of long-dead molds and a sharp, unpleasant smell. He took two and carried them gingerly back the way he had come. One minor but nerve-wracking landslide and more steps than he cared to count later, he emerged gratefully back into the sunlight.

Not that it wasn't expected, but he grimaced at seeing just how filthy he was. Cobwebs and dirt and grit covered him head to toe. The falls would do to clean him off, but a hot bath would have been fantastic.

"Hey Pod?" he called out as he made for the nearest stream. "Humans need to bathe right?"

"WHILE NOT RELEVANT TO BASIC SURVIVAL, BATHING PRACTICES SHOWED MANY BENEFITS IN HUMANS, INCLUDING REDUCTION IN THE INCIDENCE OF ILLNESS."

"Hmm… Nobody likes a cold bath though. You think there's somewhere we could find a big basin? Maybe a barrel would do… Something we could heat water in… "

"INTACT LARGE MACHINE LIFEFORM TORSO MATCHES THE SHAPE AND SIZE UNDER CONSIDERATION."

9S stopped.

The stingy light of the coliseum's lobby was not enough to hide what was going on. The machines locked in those dark cells until it was their turn in the pit had not been spared the infection. Their mangled faces revealed horrific, grinning jaws, but they still cowered and cried out like always.

He remembered telling himself the machines had to have gone berserk and killed some of the androids who came as patrons, even though that was over a month ago. Machines had eaten some of Anemone's people alive. Maybe the same thing had happened here. He told himself that and tried to put on a cold face. But even now the screech of metal bending and warping and tearing and scraping as the androids tore them apart however they could, with whatever they could, echoed in his mind.

They were everywhere. In the seats, in the arena, in the lobby. And yet that chaos gave way to a hush as soon as he entered it.

The goggles worn by some of the resistance members gave their eyes the reflective look of animals watching him from the dark. Others had a different light in their eyes. It wasn't about infection or revenge. He could see the reports behind their gazes, fueling hate that he knew too well. There was nothing furtive or ambiguous in their looks like there had been at the resistance camp.

They would have torn him apart with their bare hands if he had let them.

"I don't want to bathe in a machine's body, Pod. That's… It's a bit much."

The stream was swift and shallow and mercifully empty of anything but a few idling moose that paid him no mind. He rinsed the bottles first. The dust and dead bugs came out easily, but the ancient crusted splotches of what must have once been wine took a little more convincing. So did the smell.

When the three dark green bottles sat clean and shining on the bank, he took another quick look around. Satisfied that there weren't any machines nearby, he kicked off his shoes and socks, waded into the current, and dropped underwater.

It didn't hold a candle to a hot bath, but it was refreshing at least.

He dragged himself, sopping clothes and all to a patch of sunlight and laid flat. He didn't feel like moving. The green leaves above him swayed in hypnotizing patterns, and the sound of the stream rushing over the edge of the ravine lulled him. Even the twinkle of the drops left on the bottles made a smile itch the corners of his lips.

Suspicion arose in him that it was another trick of his programming. Probably just a little reward for finding more supplies for V, he thought. Yet he couldn't convince himself that was the case. As little sense as it probably made outside his own head, this contentment didn't come from the same place. It wasn't invasive, it was internal. It was his. It was the same feeling he always got during their downtime. All of his favorite memories were in places like this, at times like this. No mission to hurry to. No urgent business. No combat. Not even a conversation to break the peace. Just the two of them, together.

What was he doing laying there alone like some happy idiot?

Not a moment later he had his shoes back on and was back on his feet. He had to get to the oasis. Now that he had the bottles he could…

"Oh goddammit," he hissed.

Caught up in the little joy of his adventure into the wine cellar, he hadn't put it together in his head that his pack was nowhere near big enough to hold all three of the bottles. They were far too old and too hard to get to for him to risk running with them. So, he either had a very long walk ahead of him, or he was going to have to find a bigger pack.

In his desperation to avoid a redundant trip, a memory sparked. "There was a resistance outpost near the south entrance to the forest, wasn't there?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"Put it on the map."

"ALERT: UNIT 9S SUSTAINED UNNECESSARY DAMAGE DURING PREVIOUS INTERACTION WITH RESISTANCE FORCES. PROPOSAL: UNIT 9S SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS WHEN APPROACHING OTHER ANDROIDS AND AVOID CONFRONTATION."

Despite her protest, the outpost site was already on the map as he'd asked. "It's fine," he said reflexively. "Assuming he's still alive, I think I know someone there who will help us."


	16. Undeserving

9S slowed as he approached the outpost. Like a microcosm of the main camp, it wasn't much. Just a loose assortment of supplies huddled together under a discolored flap of fabric. The shopkeeper sagged on the single stool, and even from afar 9S could see the report haunted his face as well. It lived in the wrinkles that creased his brow and the dullness of his gaze.

"Hello...?" he called meekly.

The shopkeeper looked up and his eyes widened, recognition lending its brightness to them. "You…"

9S held the bottles tight against his chest, but his tension was short-lived.

The shopkeeper smiled and rose from his seat, opening his arms and waving 9S in. "Come, come in. It's good to see you're still alive."

The unexpectedly warm welcome only made 9S wary. He approached at a slow amble, peering around the empty tent. "You're alone here...?"

"For now. Our little outpost was lucky, the trees caught the worst of the tower fall. Other places..." A single wrinkle reappeared on his forehead but vanished as quickly as it came. "We're all okay here. My guys are just off on an errand; they'll be back. "

"That's… good."

Uncomfortable silence filled the space between them, all the more so because 9S seemed to be the only one made uneasy by it.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"A bag," 9S blurted gratefully, relaxing to show the bottles in his arms. "I'll be carrying these around with me, and I need something that'll keep them from breaking."

"One-time trip?"

"No. I'm hoping these will last me a long time."

The shopkeeper nodded and trudged deeper into the shade of the tarp. "I have something for storage, but glass is fragile. You'll need something to put between them to absorb impact. Thick fabric, if you can find it, but dirt will do just fine if you can't."

"I'm headed to the desert next. I can pack in a bunch of sand."

The shopkeeper glanced back at him and dug deeper into his supply box. Like most resistance materials, the pack he presented was inelegantly designed, having sacrificed appearance for maximum functionality. He laid it out flat on a table that was little more than a plank on a pole and reclaimed his seat.

"How much?" 9S asked.

A dismissive hand wave answered him. "Take it. The machines in the city proper have been dead quiet since the tower came down. I can spare a single pack."

9S frowned. "Why? There's no reason to give me this for free."

"There isn't, no. But we all lost a lot this war, and by my estimate you lost a lot more than most." He smiled, and the aura of care was so genuine it made 9S' chest tighten and throb. "If there's gotta be a reason, let's say…It's my way of contributing to one less casualty in all this."

"I don't think YoRHa can be counted as casualties," he said. An ugly feeling squirmed in his chest, but his tone carried neither venom nor despair. He had thought on the subject often since V appeared and come to terms with his intended purpose as a YoRHa android. It still bit at him, but the agony of it was largely gone. It was just a fact, cool and impartial. "We're all supposed to be dead. Including me."

The shopkeeper blinked sleepily and regarded him with the same unruffled expression Anemone had when he had accused her of pitying him. Androids didn't age, but 9S understood that look now. Even A2 had shown something like it. It was the look of an old soldier who had heard some variant of 9S' words a hundred times before and had spoken the very same words a hundred times before that.

"You're not though," he replied simply. "Dead men don't gather glass bottles."

9S couldn't retort an outlook that frustratingly simplistic without bringing up V or admitting things he wasn't ready to acknowledge.

He had the heart of the enemy he had been made to fight. And he had fought them. Over and over and over again, he killed them while denying them life or emotion or meaning, in spite of seeing—and sometimes feeling all too closely—a bounty of evidence to the contrary. He had seen how poorly machines fared when they either fulfilled or failed the treasures that gave them purpose. The multitude of implications about his nature were unbearable, so he didn't bear them. He couldn't.

Unable to defend himself against the pressure of so many unconfessable thoughts, he attacked behind a guise of innocent interest. "How's your culinary research going?"

The shopkeeper's face blanked. He rubbed at his arm and dropped his eyes, giving a stuttering laugh. "Ah that. I gave that up. There's no one to cook for and since we don't actually need to eat, I thought it was pretty wasteful."

He was smiling in such a bittersweet, self-effacing way that 9S grew hot with shame.

"I'm sorry," he murmured, bowing his head. "I didn't mean to be so petty."

"Don't worry your head over it," the shopkeeper said goodheartedly. "It was just a silly dream of mine. I'll find another."

**"IT WASN'T!"**

He hadn't had any time to think of the words, much less feel them coming. The echo still bounced under the heavy canopy when 9S realized that desperate explosion had come from him. He was dangerously close to tears, and that he'd very nearly dropped the bottles. He bit his lip to keep it from shaking, and rapidly stuffed the bottles into the pack, nearly breaking them in his haste.

"Anthurium."

9S flinched. "What?"

"My name," he explained. "It's Anthurium. Anthy is fine, though."

"…9S." He grabbed the bag and clutched it in his arms. Many things had angered or annoyed him since he repaired himself, but Anthurium's self-dismissal was the first thing that had hurt.

"It wasn't silly," he repeated softly.

He took off at a run before the inexplicable ache could take deeper roots.

* * *

It was hours before 9S made it back to the foot of the skyscraper but he returned with with a full supply of water, fish, and firewood.

"Pod, carry all this up, would you? I have one more errand to run."

The pod turned to face him with no immediate response, as if baffled he would make such a request. "NEGATIVE. THIS POD IS REQUIRED TO PROVIDE SUPPORT TO UNIT 9S."

"Don't be so stubborn. I want to get the stuff up there as soon as possible, but I also want to go poke my head in and make sure my spare parts are still there, and I don't feel like climbing up there twice." He pulled up the map and made a discreet marking followed by a hasty series of lines. "Here, this is the route I'm taking. Just hand it all off to Pod 042 and rendezvous with me when you're done."

"…AFFIRMATIVE."

9S trotted off, sticking to his route as he said he would. It wasn't far. He would be done before Pod 153 caught up to him.

The 9S model remained exactly where he left it and exactly how he left it. Silent and inactive, slumped in a dark corner wearing his old, torn up clothes. The urge to see it had come from nowhere as he collected water in the desert with events at the forest kingdom still fresh and stinging in his comfort of the underground lake had almost cleared those thoughts out entirely, and it wasn't until he was close to seeing V again that the urge came back sharp and pressing.

As he stood before the thing that looked like him but wasn't, the pain returned. The shame. There was no reason for him to have been so cruel to someone who only tried to help him. Nothing meant anything, but Anthurium had chosen to be kind anyway. And he…hadn't.

He lifted a fragment of the omnipresent concrete rubble and cracked it mercilessly against the model's temple. It listed to the side, but accepted the punishment with no resistance or any change to its resting face. With no blindfold to staunch the flow, red lubricant spilled freely from the split skin, dripping from its chin and onto its jacket. 9S peeled the staunching gel from his own temple and carefully placed it over the bit of exposed endoskeleton

The wound wasn't quite identical, so it didn't fit properly. That was okay. The nanomachines would fix it.

When stepped back into the sunlight and carefully replaced the rubble, Pod was speeding up the street to meet him. He couldn't help but laugh as she came to an abrupt stop at his side.

"You're such a worry-wart, Pod."

"NEGATIVE. THIS POD IS NOT FOR ERRANDS THAT NECESSITATE SEPARATION FROM ASSIGNED UNIT."

"I get it, I get it."

"ONE AFFIRMATION WILL SUFFICE."

"Fiiine." He trotted back toward the skyscraper. "That ladder is such a pain, though…"

Pod 042 had already put the torches to work and was hovering over the fire, ensuring the fish didn't burn. Somehow he had absorbed a lot more about cooking than 9S and Pod 153.

V was leans up against Shadow, peacefully napping in the shade of one of the empty containers.

"He sure sleeps a lot…"

"RECORDS SHOW THAT OVEREXPOSURE TO INFORMATION TAXED HUMAN COGNITIVE ABILITY SIMILAR TO ANDROID PROCESSING OVERLOAD." said Pod 153. "REPORT: IT IS BENEFICIAL FOR SUBJECT V TO TAKE FREQUENT BREAKS."

"Hey Pod 042, how far did he make it?"

"REPORT: 4% OF INDICES SORTED. 87% OF DATA DEEMED IRRELEVANT."

"That's what I expected. It must be hard. He's going to be parsing for a week or two at this rate. And that's before he even starts reading."

Maybe he should help. But V was sleeping. And hadn't divulged what he was basing his decision on for useful or not useful data.

A gentle bloom of contentment spread through him as V turned in his thin sleep, and he let it consume him. He had already made peace with the years this might all take. He would continue to provide material support until asked to do otherwise.

Let V take as long as he liked.


	17. Streams of Eden

_My mind lets go a thousand things…like the dates and deaths…_

No, that wasn't right.

V rubbed at his eyes. Progress was steady, but taxing on both his eyes and his mind. An influx of foreign information left his mind grasping for familiar thoughts. Old lines of poetry from his youth came to the surface but he could scarcely recall them properly.

He pushed his fingers up through his hair to sweep it out of his face. An unpleasant sensation lingered on his hand, and he regarded it with a scowl.

Familiar short-stride footsteps signaled 9S' return from the oasis. They were still growing accustomed to one another, but two days of V's attentiveness to his task had sown the beginnings of a routine. He announced himself and sat three replenished bottles on the table.

"Taking a break?" he asked.

"I wasn't planning on it," said V, wiping his hand gently on his coat. "But I think a few hours to take care of some other matters would serve me well."

"Other matters?" 9S repeated with a tilt of his head. "Did you find a lead?"

V shook his head and pinched his jacket primly between two fingers. "If my days here will be long, I would spend them long and clean."

The android's face lit up from behind his blindfold. "I knew it. Humans do need to bathe."

"So we do…" He wasn't sure of the source of 9S' enthusiasm. Probably a conversation he'd had with his pod. "The pond nearby where all the streams gather would be perfect, but somehow I felt you would have an objection to my going there."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"That it hasn't escaped my notice that you've kept me away from the southeast side of this city." He held up a hand before 9S could get too excited or defensive. "Your reasons don't interest me. I have no cause to go there, so long as there are there are other options."

"Why not just go to the underground lake?" 9S offered. "It's close, it's quiet, and you could bathe and eat at the same time."

V took a deep, steadying breath. 9S' prowess for noticing small details and coming to intelligent conclusions wasn't to be downplayed, but his lack of common sense could be dazzling. "Do you truly not understand why it is repulsive to eat and bathe from the same pool?"

"It's not like it's standing water but I guess I get the avoidance..." He went quiet a moment, and shrugged toward the south. "Why not just head back to the coast?"

"The water there is foul, 9S."

"The amusement park is out too then... And the oasis is too much of a hassle…" 9S lifted himself onto the table and crossed his arms. "And I suppose you're not willing to bath in any of the water in the pipes, huh?"

"Absolutely not."

9S dropped his back and sighed dramatically. "You're so difficult, V."

Griffon's unexpected cackle interrupted any annoyance V might have shown at the suggestion. "You volunteered to help out too quick, boy-bot. V's a bit of a princess on account of being on the puny side."

"You keep saying that, but he keeps up with me alright."

Griffon's beak spread open in a sneer, his triplicate eyes shining with wicked glee as he perched on the empty chair. "You hear that, V? You're on par with a metal runt that ain't made for combat."

V hooked the head of his cane inside Griffon's mouth, lifting it so he could neither extract himself nor speak. "You mentioned something about a forest kingdom before?" he continued casually with 9S.

"Y-yeah…" 9S stammered, shifting away from Griffon's muffled curses and irate flapping. "It's probably the best thing for you. Clean, shallow water and lots of mountains." He shrugged. "I'll take you, but I gotta warn you: It's dangerous."

"You said the same of the caves."

"The cave machines are strong because they're built strong. The forest machines are strong because they train."

V raised a brow. "You mean they aren't mindless."

"I mean they absorbed human records on monarchy and loyalty and they operate in large, coordinated and aggressive groups as knights on behalf of a dead king."

"In all times the weak worship the strong, it seems." V smirked off toward the horizon and released Griffon. A sharp flick rid the edge of saliva. "We can use the exercise. I will meet you there."

"I'm not going with you?"

"I have a more valuable use of your time than escorting me across a wasteland full of passive machines. You're going to find me something to wear." He beamed at Griffon and meticulously wiped the cane off on his feathers. "Something that doesn't stand out quite so much as my current clothes, ideally."

9S covered his mouth, but could still be heard snickering at Griffon's indignant expression. "Okay, you do stand out a lot. I'll see what I can do." He darted to the edge of the roof with all his usual energy, pausing briefly for one last word: "Don't cross the ravine without me."

He jumped off the roof and V watches him float down on Pod 153 and trot off toward the southeast.

"Hey soda can," said Griffon. "How about you carry V awhile?"

"POSSIBLE," Pod 042 responded almost curiously, with a click of his claws.

V looked skeptically at the tiny mechanical vices on the end of the rods that formed the pod's arms and gently nudged it back with his cane. "Focus on leading the way."

"ALERT: RAVINE CROSSING LIES 9.4KM NORTH. TRAVEL TIME BASED ON SUBJECT V AVERAGE WALKING SPEED EXCEEDS 2 HOURS."

V held out his arm to Griffon and grinned. "I'm not walking."

* * *

V swiveled his hips with practiced ease as Shadow swerved beneath him to keep up with Pod 042.

They were keeping to the western side of town, weaving through alleys and between derelict vehicles on their journey north. The high, thin clouds blurred the light of the sun and gave the crumbling concrete and twisting trees a soft, dreamy quality. Passive yellow-white gazes followed them from the blank faces of the few machines they passed, and a few small animals darted into bushes or inside of cracks as they passed.

So much of his memory was filled with sites of fresh destruction, or of places still rotting and ashen. The freshly crumbled wreckage of the tower aside, the city ruins were thousands of years past their catastrophe. Emptiness was everywhere, but the specific quiet of abandonment was absent on the ground. V knew well the forlorn air of a ruined home. The ruins were more like a graveyard so long untended that the crumbled stones had ceased to be any different from the grasses that had overgrown them.

It was beautiful. Enough so that a rare nostalgia stirred in his heart and left no bitter remains in its wake.

_Again the deadened bough shall bend, with blooms of sweetest breath…_  
_O miracle of miracles, this Life that follows Death…_

That one was right, he thought contently.

Wind fluttered through his hair and coat as they breached the city limits and emerged from the alleys into an open field. Remains of a raised highway and broken white blocks dotted the short grasses. On the other side, beyond something that may have once been a radio tower, the distinctive black shape of 9S awaited them.

9S seemed aware of V's surprise to find him ahead of them. He held out a stack of haphazardly folded clothing and grinned cheekily. "What took you so long?"

"We took the scenic route." He accepted the clothes without giving the android the satisfaction of questioning him on just how fast he was. He looked to the bridge instead. "Is this crossable?"

"Yeah, it was actually reconstructed recently." He patted the top layer of the pile. "Put the cloak on at least. We're going to be passing an outpost."

V shuffled the surprisingly breathable cloak on without protest, pulling it tightest around his body to cover his tattoos. As promised, the bridge was not nearly as heinous as it appeared, and the crossing was uneventful. The mall sparked faint interest. He knew of them, but he didn't think he had ever actually been inside of one.

9S stopped beside a cascade that fell from some high cliff that had nestled up to the back end of the structure. "Are you sure you couldn't just bathe in this?"

V gestured to the holes in the floor where the rushing falls had worn through the concrete and flood the lower level. "I appreciate your faith in my constitution, but it would only embarrass us both when I was invariably swept away by this current."

9S looked between the water and V and reached his hand into the current. It didn't so much as budge him, but he didn't push the subject. He led them through the mall's back entrance and out into what felt like a different world. A warmer one, with air thickened by a haze of pollen and humidity.

A stocky android in faded fatigues and a loose shirt that had long since ceased to be white nodded to 9S as the passed his camp. 9S gave a shy nod back before scurrying by.

They were alone after that, though the silence of the forest wasn't so complete as that of the ruins. Birdsong and the hum of insects were omnipresent as they wandered through the mountains. V followed 9S along the myriad courses of babbling falls and broad streams until they finally arrived at a shallow pool. Aside from a few stray moose, it appeared to be empty.

V left 9S side immediately. The water was so clear he could see dozens of tiny, bottom-feeding fish dart out of his way as he waded in. He parted the limbs of a massive bent tree hanging low over the water and disappeared behind it. The water was just cool enough to be a welcome respite after the hike there. With cupped hands, he gently splashed his face, and shook off the cloak.

A hasty splashing closed in on him just as he unlaced his jacket. 9S parted the branches, and V threw the black coat over the android's face with all the force in his lean body. He was rewarded with a sharp yelp and a loud splash.

"What was that for?!" 9S shouted over the sound of his soaked clothing spilling back into the water.

V parted the boughs enough for 9S to see the stern look on his face. "In case you weren't programmed with the vital human principle of privacy."

"I didn't think you'd be that fast," 9S grumbled as he pulled himself out of the water. "We didn't even do a perimeter check."

The markings on his body shifted and thinned. Shadow materialized in on the bank. Her hidden markings swirled as red as her eyes, and she snuffed the air before padding out into the water with a satisfied chuff.

"She says it's clear," V said curtly. He hooked his jacket on his cane and the bough snapped back into place behind him.

He could hear 9S sigh heavily, but he paid him no mind. Soon enough Shadow had entangled him in some game and V was able to enjoy a measure of solitude as they played along the opposite bank.

Though the clothes he had arrived in weren't technically his—nor were they to his taste for that matter—he gave them their due diligence first. It was odd. He had Vergil's memories of doing something like this in his younger years, when being hunted meant long spans away from humanity, but it was the first time he himself had ever done such a thing. The waters he had sometimes gone to bathe in were colder. And there hadn't been any such luxury as a companion like Shadow or a convenient android openly anxious to protect him.

Their play noise had quieted by the time V was done washing both the clothes and himself. He found a smooth stone to sit on, pressed the tip of his cane down into the streambed, and leaned his forehead against the handle. It felt good to let the water flow over him. To meld in with this strange place as part of the flowing stream. He cherished what he was, and who he was, but the delights of being no one, even if it was on an empty earth, were a heaven of their own.

Sparda didn't exist there. Nor did the source of his nightmares. It all lived in him, and only in him. Just the bad dreams of a man he used to be.

He forced himself to stir and wobbled toward the bank. The clothes 9S had procured were similar to those of the android they'd passed. Cargo pants so faded their green was just a deep gray, and a white shirt with a gold insignia on it. He shrugged the pants on and wrapped the cloak around his shoulders. Once he was dry, he could finish, and they could be on their way. In the meantime, he pressed his back to a tree and whistled gently for Shadow.

She melted beneath the streambed and materialized in his lap. 9S followed shortly after, leaning over V with a perplexing grin on his face.

"What...?" asked V.

"You always seem to get sleepy when we go somewhere."

V couldn't find it in him to work up any indignance, or even mild irritation. Did he not have as much vitality as he thought? Or maybe he simply wasn't used to pushing this body.

"Take a nap," 9S suggested. "I'll keep watch."

V's eyes fluttered closed. It might only have been a memory, or some illusory portion of a dream, but he thought he heard the toll of a bell echoing in the distance.


	18. A Beautiful World, Part 1

26 September 11945, 5:07 AM.

The hacking space remains pure white.

9S is diligent with his maintenance and organizes his memory regions again. It is a less painful task than before. The older memories he organized previously show signs of processing. With enough time, they will sublimate into the deeper archives of his personality core.

His recent memories of V are not as massive or overwhelming as the earlier ones. Their impact is lower, but they are all crisp and clear and they twinkle with 9S' interest. Except one.

While it is a small and quiet, V's casual remark about the human need for privacy echoes over and over again. The memory did not strike 9S any particular way at the time of its creation. It is the processing that has made an impression on him.

He has no memory of privacy in YoRHa. There was no well-known prohibition against it as there was with emotion. It was just a given that everything was monitored. Even communications from the Commander could be deleted if the filters decided so.

9S recognizes that most of what happened outside of his own mind while he was a soldier had never truly been his own. He does not resent this, but it does fill him with profound loneliness. He is certain he is not the only one who was anxious and frightened by existing. But none of them could reveal such a thing, so they had all suffered alone. For nothing. Or for V. A single human whose primary concern was to leave.

Anger heats like a breathing creature inside of 9S. He easily cools it.

The strain of his opposing feelings has not lessened, but the chronic nature of this problem has dulled the ache. He is familiar with what it means to love and hate someone at the same time. V, at least, has never done him any harm.

9S wrestles unease at that thought. He sorts memories where V occasionally shows a warm or playful side, but those moments are never unintentional. The more 9S replays them, the more certain he becomes that they are a conscious act. He has not glimpsed beneath the surface of V yet. Even when he smiles, he is aloof. Unknowable. V is good at keeping what is in his heart to himself, and 9S' unease grows.

Is there anything that truly binds them together?

His programming tells him that being useful to V is enough, but the pieces of him that are most irrevocably his own twist in agony.

V's existence gives 9S cause to live. With living came the shameful desire to continue living. No matter how carefully 9S keeps the reality of V's death in his mind, something must fill the space between then and now. And 9S knows intimately that he fears living in solitude above all else.

He does not want to help V leave. He does not want to share V.

He wants to know if humans were really gods worth dying for in the first place.

He wants to know everything, everything, everything about V.

* * *

**—S… _9S?_**

9S snapped his head up to find V looming over him. "Sorry," he blurted. "I was checking up on something in my memory data. What's up?"

V gestured to Pod 042. "REPORT: SUBJECT V HAS PARSED 90% OF TOTAL INDICES. THIS POD PROPOSES A DAY OF REST."

"Shouldn't he rest _after_ he's done?"

"The end of a difficult task is where one is most likely to become complacent," V said with an approving pat on the pod's shell. "Returning refreshed will ensure I make the final push with the appropriate attention to detail."

9S bobbed his head along. That didn't make sense to him, but he let it slide.

"I guess that means you want to do something refreshing…?" He wasn't well-versed at finding fun things to occupy time off. Downtime on earth was traditionally for repairs and planning the next steps of an operation.

"I want to know more about this place," V answered. "It's possible I may find leads I wish to follow."

"You know I'd take you anywhere you wanted to go."

"You may not always be with me, 9S."

The words weren't spoken mean-spiritedly, but they squeezed at 9S regardless. He maintained a casual smile. "True, I guess. Will you at least not go anywhere dangerous without me?"

"I can't say you've taken me anywhere dangerous as of yet," V gloated with a wide grin.

"Ooof," 9S groaned, embarrassed on his own behalf. Was that how his model sounded? "That doesn't instill confidence. If you approach a goliath class unit with that attitude you're going to end up dead."

V planted his cane and did his best to look more modest. "I know my limits well, 9S. A fox does not try to live the life of the lion."

9S was only passingly familiar with those animals. They appeared in a lot of the human fables he had been reading from Pod 153's archive to try and better understand V—or more accurately, to better understand some the things that came out of V's mouth—but he more or less understood what V was trying to say.

"If you say so…"

* * *

9S hopped up the ladder to the very top of the defunct Engels unit. V was already there waiting for him with Griffon on his arm. If it was anything more than a short walk or a modest climb, he tended to avoid using his own body to travel. It worried 9S a little, as it was likely bad for V to be that sedentary, but he didn't hold that against him. If the pods could lift him as easily as Griffon lifted V, he would never use a ladder either.

Their view wasn't as grand as at the top of the skyscraper but being closer to the ground made it a lot easier to see the important landmarks.

He gestured west first, across the empty field. "See that broken bridge? That leads to the factory. A lot of the machines in this area came from in there. Probably still do. Once you go in far enough there's just conveyor belts churning them out."

"And were I to go in, would these freshly made machines be like these—" He jabbed his cane toward the stubbies on the ground, milling about as though they were perpetually confused. "Or like the variety in the caves?"

"I don't really know. There's no network so I guess…it must depend on the machine." He shuffled uncomfortably. He hadn't given any thought to what newly manufactured machines might be like now. "It's a place I think you would be alright, but if I'm honest… I don't like the idea of you going in there."

V gave him an expectant look, and he self-consciously rubbed at his arm. "I know it must sound illogical, but I think that place is probably cursed."

To his surprise, V didn't scoff. It was Griffon who did so. "A superstitious android. I can tell everyone we really did see it all when we get back."

V waved a hand for silence. "You don't strike me as the type to use such a word lightly. What brings you to that conclusion?"

"A prophet machine appeared there. When he died, his followers went berserk." The memory was hazy. So much had happened there, and there was a great deal of noise between then and now. But he remembered the words he heard in the moon server. "_O grant me the mercy of the land. O grant me the joy of the heavens. Release me from my yoke of iron. Thus, shall our souls be saved…_ Those machines, they thought..."

From the corner of his eye, he could see V staring at him. Appraising him with such open scrutiny that it made the blindfold feel invisible. He brushed his coat off and hurriedly turned his back on the bridge. "Doesn't matter what they thought. They're all dead now."

"Takes a load off my mind," Griffon mumbled.

For once, 9S was grateful for the blue eagle's all-inclusive irreverence. He pointed east to a sunlit field visible on the other side of the shadows between the leaning skyscrapers. "That pond you were considering for a bath over there? The Resistance Camp is right underneath that broken bit of road on the far side of it."

"Which is why you've kept me away from that area…" guessed V. "Are they hostile?"

"No. They're allies and they've been… really good to me."

He lapsed into silence as he thought of Anemone. She hadn't looked at him any differently, and Jackass treated him as unscrupulously as ever. But after his disturbing experience at the coliseum, he wondered how long that would that last.

"...9S?"

"Huh? Oh, sorry." He smiled as warmly as he could manage. "They're not hostile but…well, you read the machine report. I don't really think meeting a lot of androids would be safe for you. They're dealing with finding out the truth, so they might be unpredictable."

"Like you were?"

9S resisted the urge to correct his tense and nodded quietly. He was perfectly predictable with V. It was other androids he couldn't keep an even temper with.

"There were only a few hundred YoRHa, but there are millions of androids on the planet serving in the Army of Humanity. I don't know what will happen to you if the commanders get wind of a living human after all of this."

Griffon fluttered his wings. "Sounds like they'd make a king outta him. Can you imagine, V? Your own personal army."

"I can indeed imagine," V murmured darkly. "And it doesn't impress me."

"There is a second reason you might not want to get too close," said 9S. He gestured between his dark clothing and V's, hidden as it was beneath the faded tawny cloak. "You look like a YoRHa unit."

* * *

9S struggled to hold in laughter at V's progress down the sewer ladder. It was too narrow for him to drift down with Griffon, and he didn't seem to trust Pod 042 with the task, so for once he had to deal with it himself. He was reasonably fast, but his gangly limbs gave him the look of a spider scuttling down.

"Was there any reason," he asked as he reached the bottom and stepped into the podlight. "That we did not just fly over that barrier?"

"I thought it would ruin the surprise." He smiled. Though he didn't have good memories, he did think of the next destination as something that would get an interesting reaction out of V. "This way."

When he invariably led them to a second ladder, V shot him a tight-lipped glare. "We're flying when we go back."

9S laughed. V could be as finicky as a child—though he preferred to be called 'particular'—and was full of odd behaviors, but the more 9S learned about humans, the less he could blame him. If V was to be taken as the example, humans were adaptable and easy-going, but delicate. It was hard to maintain an image of him as some haughty higher existence when he fell asleep almost instantly if he sat down anywhere out of the sun.

As soon as they reached the surface, a burst of fireworks lit the darkly clouded sky, bathing both of them in violet light. V's eyes widened, and he followed 9S through the turnstiles and into the dim plaza filled with dazzling, festive lights.

For once, it seemed he had no clever remarks to make.

9S's chest puffed with satisfaction. "Welcome to the amusement park."


	19. A Beautiful World, Part 2

V remained speechless longer than 9S thought he would. They were past the turnstiles and into the plaza before a shambling machine in a tattered jester cap snapped him out of his trance.

Mangled outer plating revealed the metal teeth and complex arrangements of metal and mesh-work beneath. It showed no aggression, but one of its eyes still occasionally flickered red. A mechanical problem most likely, some frayed wire or partially fried component sparking to life at random.

"Ww-w-eeeelll-" it called in a distorted voice. "-coooooome."

On the edge of his vision, V shifted his grip on his cane to its familiar read position. 9S gently held his arm out and pushed both of them back out of its path. It shuffled right by them, tossing confetti with merry energy that didn't match its appearance.

"What… was that?"

"These machines emulate records of human fun," said 9S. "They'll defend themselves if you attack, but they don't want to fight."

It felt like a hundred years ago that he had first seen the amusement park and had V's same reaction. Even when they were whole, their behavior had been so strange to him. They had been utterly irrelevant when he'd last been there. Invisible to him in his rage as he entered the God Box and invisible when he awakened to find it, and his Operator, destroyed.

Looking at them now, he couldn't help but feel pity. " When the tower formed, a lot of machines in the area were infected with a wide area virus. It's why a lot of the forest machines sound the way they do. The virus disappeared with the tower but…it leaves a lot of damage behind."

Another machine, in slightly better condition, greeted them as they approached the main stairway. With great effort, it held up a single shiny earring to V.

"Thaaa—nk...c-c-us..tom-mer…"

9S watched V stare at the offering without any move to take it. The cool demeanor he was accustomed to was marred by a single deep crease in his brow.

"It's okay. They'll fix themselves in time."

V nodded but remained quiet.

Rather than continue to offer reassurance, 9S let the subject drop and proceeded further in. He was mystified. They had already passed through a lot of the south end of the city ruins together; V regularly stepped over bodies of androids and machines alike as though they were no different from bits of rubble lying in the street. That callous attitude of his was what 9S was banking on. So where had it gone?

Maybe it was a human thing. To 9S, the amusement park was the only thing that gave him any reason to think things might be okay. He even spied a few new machines among the ranks of the parade on the central boulevard. Their caps were clean, and their painted-on smiles were freshly applied, though just as crooked as ever. Cheery melodies rang out in their atrocious voices, but their singing had never been very good to begin with.

9S envied their simplicity. How could they ever fail, if their goal was just to have fun?

As they came to the blocked bridge and the cluttered remains of the god box rose in front of them, V finally broke his silence. "What's this?"

"It was a part of the tower," 9S explained, more brusquely than he intended. "An external resource unit that gathered up a bunch of junk parts."

"…Why would it gather junk parts?"

9S shrugged. "Told you, there's no meaning to what machines do."

"I am growing to suspect…" V began, leaning forward over 9S so heavily that the point of his cane sank deep into the cobblestones. "That when you say those words, they are more for your sake than for mine."

A foot slid back to prepare 9S for evasion. It was motor memory at this point, but he caught himself and stubbornly refused to back down. "Their behaviors aren't self-aware. It's just random repetition."

"The formation of a monarchy, then a cult, and now a circus cannot be taken as random actions, even if they are born of imitation."

"Human history is varied. There's plenty of options for data to replicate. They parrot what they discover with no deviation. Even if they fail at it. Over. And over. And over."

Something flicked through V's eyes. A peek of bitterness that 9S couldn't understand. "Even the humiliations of failure are not enough to deter a being that has chosen its purpose."

"Purpose…?" 9S asked tightly. "What purpose? You read the report. Did you not get it? Their purpose was to kill androids. They were made for it, and they were good at it. They started stalling at 80% control of the planet thousands of years ago. This cheap imitation of humans? Began maybe a few hundred years ago as far as we can tell. This was all just an elaborate way for them to waste time so they wouldn't kill us all and void their purpose. But now there's no network and the self-made defects are all that's left. They don't have a purpose, V. "

9S only grew more incensed when V looked at him with something like disappointment. "If you have something to say, **say it**."

V raised an eyebrow at him and gave a slow, thoughtful twist of his cane in his grip. Several times 9S noticed him pause on the grip he usually reserved for combat. He turned to head back down the stairs. "It would only waste time. Let's move on to the next location."

9S immediately dashed to block his path.

It was a mistake. The thought flashed like a bulb over and over in his mind. Who was he to get so aggressive with a human? But he couldn't help it. A thousand jumbled thoughts of himself, the machines, their idiotic quests for destruction of themselves and everything else and the useless, unlosable happiness of the amusement park swirled in his mind like a suffocating miasma. He could give V passes for anything else, but not this. Not when he was staring down his nose at 9S with that expression that he hated so much. If he had an answer that made all of it finally make sense, 9S thought he might even be willing to fight him for that.

"You're the human," 9S grated. "So, if you've got some tidy explanation, I'd love to hear it."

"Dip him in the river who loves water. You insist on ignoring the obvious, so figure it out on your own."

"Have you considered that it's not obvious to me? The last Machine War started 5 years ago! I wasn't even made, and the Terminals already knew everything and had their hands in everything."

"Terminals?" V asked, curiosity finally cracking his increasing aura of detachment.

"The Red Girls. The ones mentioned in the machine report. They wanted..." 9S grew quiet. His shoulders tensed and he crossed his arms tight over his body. More than anything, he hated thinking of N2. Speaking their names made it all come back so vividly. "Who knows what the hell they wanted. All they ever did was mess with us. Treating YoRHa like toys, because they knew from the start it was all pointless."

"You speak as though you met them yourself."

In that instant, 9S mind cleared of the rising feeling that V was also toying with him. He had assumed V would have put it together by now. To think he hadn't...Maybe it wasn't that odd that he was being so cold. The urge to let him go on without knowing rushed to the front of 9S' mind, but there was a glimmer of hope that he couldn't ignore. The desire to be understood, and to understand whatever V did about the nature of purpose, was a deafening roar. His fears, his doubts, and even his anger were forced to step aside.

He took a deep breath and got out of V's way, hoisting himself up onto a ledge and gently swinging his legs.

"I did," he said calmly. "I met N2. They gave me most of those top secret YoRha files you read. Not out of kindness, mind you. It seemed…like just the opposite." His stomach turned uncomfortably, and he had to look away from the remains of the recovery unit. "They wanted me to suffer for some reason, and they used the truth to do it."

V's eyes regarded him without change, steady on his face before drooping closed. "I see. That explains much about you."

"I didn't mean to hide it; I thought you knew already so it just...didn't seem like it mattered."

"Very little seems to matter to you." V leaned back against a wall on the opposite end of the avenue. "But you're a poor liar. Were any of it actually so, you wouldn't take nearly so much care to hide your nature from me."

The noise of the parade swelled between them, and they stared at one another over the heads of the carelessly frolicking machines.

"So what if I do?" 9S barked the moment they were alone again. "That smug smile you wear around is no different. I haven't got a clue what's really on your mind."

"I am in your world," V said, with the exact kind of oily, infinitely unlikable smile 9S meant. "Not the other way around. If I have my way, I will leave as quietly as I arrived and disturb nothing."

"You already disturbed _me._"

"Your disturbance goes much deeper than my presence."

"Can you stop being a smart ass for five seconds?" he snapped. "You don't know anything about me or what I was doing before. You didn't ask to be here, but I didn't ask for you to come either."

By the slight jerk of V's head, it may have been the first thing 9S has said that truly got through to him. He planted his cane between his feet and settled both hands on the handle, his gaze serious and attentive, if still a little arrogant.

"What _are_ you asking for, then?"

Heat rushed to 9S face. The fight, if it had been one, was over. V had gotten right to the heart of the problem, leaving 9S feeling as difficult and demanding as he had accused V of being. The things he wanted when he brought V there suddenly felt small and stupid, and his base longing felt no better. He was so used to having to keep secrets and deploy complicated gambits just to keep one step ahead. With V, at least as far as it concerned their working relationship, there wasn't really any need for that, was there?

V had done him no harm, and some deep place inside 9S that even he didn't know was there unknotted with the realization that he wouldn't. He had his own business and no reason to cut 9S down. Not even if he expressed doubts, or was brazen, or asked too many questions.

"I just want to know you better…" he admitted, mortified by how childish it sounded. "I'm a scanner, I get curious. It's frustrating to not understand things, especially when you could answer my questions so easily. I don't even know what the deal with Shadow or that bird is yet. I could be of more use if I knew more about you."

A smile flashed, and a mild laugh followed. "You would benefit from following your Pod's example and being more direct. What do you propose?"

"Well, I want you to know me a little better too so… How about... I dunno, I ask you questions, and you ask me one you think is equivalent. If I don't answer, you don't answer. That way neither of us has to say anything we don't want to." V's cheer dulled to an almost pained squint and 9S frowned. "What…? Bad idea?

He shook his head and started back down the stairs. "No, just amazed how little things change… Ten thousand years in the future and I'm being asked to play 20 questions."

9S hopped down from his ledge and took off after him, bright-eyed beneath his blindfold.. "Humans did this kind of thing as a game? Must have been for socialization, right? Is twenty the traditional limit? Oh—shit, those don't count do they?"

V held up a hand. "I will waive them and agree to this only on the condition that we move on. Agreed?"

"Are you sure? It looks like the roller coaster is intact, so it should still be functional. Pod told me humans liked roller coasters."

V's eyes glazed over so thoroughly that 9S thought he might not actually know what a roller coaster was. Before he could ask if he was alright, an astonishingly sour look scrunched V's face into a hundred wrinkles of disgust. He looked like he had stepped barefoot into a pile of boar dung. 9S hadn't even thought V was capable of being that expressive.

"I don't like roller coasters," he growled. "Let's go."

9S would have loved to ask for the obvious story there, but he had to be a little more selective if he only had twenty.

He followed after the endlessly frustrating and endlessly interesting human, stifling laughter all the way.


	20. A Curious World, Part 1

The strange twilight around the amusement park gave way to bright daylight once they flew over the barricade and landed back in the city proper.

Behind V, 9S was quiet but bright-faced, most likely deciding on priority for his questions. He seemed like exactly the type to fire off all 20 in a row. Even though they promised some keep information about his host, V was weary of the next few hours already,

"Let's start with the obvious since you wouldn't tell me before," said 9S, skipping ahead to resume his role as guide. "What's with your support units and those tattoos?"

A simple question, deserving of a simple equivalent. "Why are the pods so much more knowledgeable than you?"

"My ability to process information is top of the line but my storage is still limited. Keeping a big archive of old-world data would only bog me down. It's not like I need that stuff to fight or for intel gathering."

Magic made more sense to V than technology. From his first day with Pod 042, he had begun to think of the pods as though they were just highly sophisticated familiars. 9S, meanwhile, resided in an uncanny place where he was more or less human until he showed his stellar lack of common sense or said something about his inner workings. "Pod, if you would?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. SUPPORT UNITS GRIFFON AND SHADOW ARE FAMILIARS. MARKINGS ON SUBJECT V'S BODY SIGNIFY CONTRACTUAL OBLIGATION BETWEEN PARTIES AND APPEAR ONLY WHEN FAMILIARS ARE INACTIVE."

"What the heck's a—" 9S slapped a hand over his lips before he could complete the question. "That doesn't count!"

"Of course," V said diplomatically.

9S repeated the question quietly to his pod. "What's a familiar?"

"REPORT:" said Pod 153. "OLD WORLD DATA MATCH FOR 'FAMILIAR': A DEMON WHICH ATTENDS TO A WITCH, OFTEN TAKING THE FORM OF AN ANIMAL."

"A witch... Wait, wait a minute! Why did Pod 042 know already?!"

"That counts. Why do _you_ know what a witch is?"

9S bashfully adjusted the straps of his pack as they came to the bridge leading to the mall and the forest kingdom beyond. "I've uh...been reading old human fables while you've been working on the index. I thought it might help me understand you a little better."

V watched with amused interest, but 9S didn't blush. Perhaps that was a left out of his otherwise convincing human functionalities. "An adorably diligent effort."

"Sh...shut up... Just answer my question."

"It came up as part of a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"That... is between Pod 042 and me," V answered. "Your question is denied. We are at two."

Pouting, 9S led them across the bridge. "I thought all witches were... uhm... female."

V didn't bother answering that. Nothing good would come of it, and his attention had wandered to a very different looking barricade off to the far right, nestled between the edge of the ravine and a derelict office building. Derelict construction beams in a sun-faded and dust-coated red were bent and mangled into approximately the right shape, even if it meant some of them were jammed directly into the cement. Ahead of him, 9S was mumbling his way to his next question—something about how V being a witch explained his combat abilities—totally unaware that V was no longer directly behind him.

"How did you learn to be a witch?" 9S called.

V pointed his cane toward the red mass and called back: "Why aren't we going that way?"

Silence answered him, followed by the slow, rhythmic tap of 9S's footsteps as he came back to V's side.

"There was a village that way once." He crossed his arms and leaned over the suspension ropes, his chin resting on his forearms. "A bunch of pacifist machines, living between the amusement park and the forest kingdom. The virus must have gotten to them. It's all just burnt husks now. Only Pascal is left—their leader. One of the first machines we could trust. As an ally, I mean. And he... doesn't remember anything. Not me, not the village, or even his name. I thought it'd be best to leave him alone."

While 9S was lost in his wistful thoughts, V's own thoughts grew bitter and he gripped his cane against the uncomfortable prickle on his skin and the phantom scent of cold ash in his nose. He had expected a much simpler and much less familiar answer. Though it intrigued him that it was the first time 9S had avoided something without V's safety as the cause for doing so, he would be perfectly content to never go there.

"My mother was a witch," he said tersely. "My abilities likely stem from her. You will have to cope with any curiosity you have about her on your own. I have no intention to speak of her to you."

"...I understand," 9S said softly.

The tinge of unaffected sympathy in his voice brought the doting smile as 2B uttered her last breath fresh to V's mind. He scattered the thought. No matter how invasive a question 9S asked him, he would not bring her up, or reveal that he so much as knew her name.

"...Can I ask about your dad?"

"There isn't much to tell of him. His legacy is all I can recollect."

"You didn't ask me anything back?"

"You asked for permission, not information." V strolled by to finish their crossing, leaving 9S to catch up to him. "That's three."

The storefronts all covered in vines and moss and the green-tinted light lent a garden-like tranquility to the mall that gave V pause. He liked the heights of the skyscraper as a safe place. No one ever came up there, and it offered him an excellent view of the city as well as a place out of the sun on the occasions it showed itself through the clouds. But he was becoming aware that it was somewhat inconvenient as well. There was no place to hide, should it come to that. The only avenue of escape if someone other than 9S crept up there was to jump down into the extremely open and unprotected skyline. Jumping from the north side meant flat, equally unprotected terrain, west meant a risky leap into unstable debris, and east meant first making it over the empty shipping containers and then closing the distance between himself and the resistance camp.

The cooking smoke alone was going to eventually give away that there was activity up there...

The mall wasn't ideal either. Forest kingdom machines frequently found their way in despite the outpost. But maybe there were unexplored options—like the elevator door set into the bottom of one of the vast trees sprouting from a pile of rubble.

"Where does that go?"

**"Nowhere."**

They both stopped in their tracks, mutually stunned by the quick, emotionless, and far too instant answer. V was beyond caring if 9S lied to him, as he so frequently did by omission, but he had never heard him lie so reflexively that it betrayed the truth.

"The point of exchanging equivalent questions was to avoid lies, was it not?"

"Yeah." His chest visibly bobbed with deep but silent breaths. Could an android hyperventilate? "Sorry, I—I don't want to talk about it."

"Why are we headed to the forest kingdom?" V offered.

"Huh? Uh… The castle. There's a big castle further in." The simple question had the desired effect: 9S' relaxed. "It's where I found the wine bottles. The tower fall wrecked a lot of the infrastructure so I don't think we should go in, but I figure we can get a good view of it at least. Wait, did that count?"

"No, it was a practical question about our destination. Nothing more."

Again they passed the friendly android on their way into the forest kingdom and again 9S rushed by.

It wasn't any business of his, but the game was still on, so he pressed out another question. "Why are you so embarrassed of that man?"

9S opened his mouth, but he seemed to have some difficulty deciding on an appropriate counter-question. Finally, he blurted out, "Why don't you like roller coasters?!"

In some corner of his being, V could feel Griffon let loose an explosive cackle. He reminded himself that he need not answer the question, but at the same time, burning through silly questions just to end this silly game quicker was a reasonable tactic.

"My brother liked roller coasters," he muttered sourly. "When we were children, he convinced me to board the biggest roller coaster at a park over and over again despite my protests." His face darkened, and he rubbed at the deep wrinkle in his brow. "Until I vomited."

9S stood stone still, trying valiantly but ineffectually to look like he wasn't going to laugh even as his cheeks puffed out with the effort of holding it in.

"That's four," said V, with a dignified glare that dared 9S to actually laugh.

9S nodded wordlessly, covering his mouth and taking deep breaths to keep his childish glee contained. "That guy," he began, patting his chest for composure. "His name is Anthurium. He gave me the new pack and was nice to me. …Even though I snapped at him." V couldn't tell exactly what expression 9S was making beneath his blindfold. It was too complicated for even his expressive nature to relay. "He wanted to throw a big feast for humanity when the war was over. But obviously he's given that up."

V tapped his cane against his chin. "Do you think he has salt?"

_"…What?"_

"Salt. Your fishing efforts are appreciated, but simple roasted fish is a bland meal to subsist on."

"Wow, what a bratty thing to say. Salt isn't free you know."

"You border the ocean and salt is a luxury?"

"Salt is a corrosive! Why do you think all the machines here are so rusty? Boil your food in saltwater if it's so bland to you." He hopped over a massive, winding root with a huff. "It sure doesn't look bland the way you gobble it down…"

There wouldn't have been time to contest that even if V wanted to. The forest kingdom was active today. No matter how they directed their efforts toward stealth or preserving their stamina, the machines were everywhere. Their harsh voices were less broken—new machines with new speakers to blow out had replenished their hostile numbers. 9S led them toward the canyon and up a high cliff where they were safely out of reach by the screaming ranks of machine knights. From the rocky peaks, the castle stood in the distance as castles did, faded by mists and distance, large and old and susceptible to such things as city-sized towers collapsing onto them. A single intact spiral of tower debris jutted up from inside of it like a strange and alien tooth biting into the bones of the weathered stone.

They took a moment to rest in the shade of a massive tree with an ominous black chain around it. A suspiciously empty altar lay inside its hollowed trunk, and a strange doll was nailed to the bark higher than even V could reach. V could not make out any of its features, only that rust the color of ancient blood had stained the front of the doll and the bark beneath it.

Faintly, over the sound of the rushing waterfall, a bell tolled soft and solemn.

"Where is this...?"

"Nowhere special," said 9S. "I found a weapon here before so I knew it was a safe place to stop."

"You have more than the sword?" V asked reflexively.

"What's your third summon?" 9S countered with a grin.

V smiled and took the consequence of his hasty ask on the chin. "My strongest and the one bound most closely to my will. Nightmare."

"No I mean like—Is it a fish or something?"

V lifted his head from the ground and squinted at 9S. "A fish? No. Like his namesake, Nightmare's form is most... indescribable."

"Indescribable..." 9S repeated in an awed whisper. He rose from his resting squat and swapped out to the other weapon he kept at the ready: A simple-looking spear with interesting but nonsensical tribal patterns all along the shaft. "This is my other main weapon, but I have maybe eighteen."

V tilted his head and sat up. "You didn't strike me as the weapon collecting type. You're not a combat model."

"I'm not—either of those. It just sort of happened. Some of them were given to me as payment for errands, and a lot of them were in chests that could only be opened via hacking. And since I can hack..."

A perfectly sensible and pragmatic answer, for once. But something bothered V. "Switch back to the sword."

Without even asking why, 9S obediently swapped. It was instantaneous. The spear vanished from his hand in a flurry of golden flecks of light and the sword materialized on his back, suspended by the same golden ring that 9S duplicated in order to wield the weapons in combat.

"How do your weapons work exactly?"

9S' face brightened, and he almost hopped into it without bothering to offer a counter-question. "How does that stuff you do with your cane work?"

"Magic," V answered flatly. When he saw 9S' disappointed frown, he smiled. "I don't mean to be evasive, but it truly is as simple as that. Copies of it made with my magic, and-" He ran his hand over the length of the cane, casually imbuing and removing the violet glow. "A coating of my magic to allow me to pierce what strength alone would not."

"You really are a witch, huh..."

Griffon was tickled by it, but V found the thought as endearing as it was bittersweet. Perhaps with only trace remnants of his demonic heritage running through him, he was primarily the son of a witch.

9S made himself comfortable. "I promise I'll answer the thing about the weapons, but I can't wait, it's been bugging me since I first saw you use it: Is the cane special or something? Like a wand?"

"No, it's just a cane I found in an antique shop. What about your sword? I notice none of the YoRHa corpses we've passed have blades like yours."

9S faltered. He seemed more confused than disturbed as he called the sword to his hand and stared at it. A crooked frown rose to his lips. "I don't...remember." Maybe he felt V's curious eyes on him. "I'm sorry, I really don't." He smiled crookedly and a small, shrill laugh escaped him. "It must have been… a lifetime ago."

"...Are you alright?"

He plastered on a weak, faulty smile, but V didn't think it was for him this time. It lacked that fawning, submissive quality V had grown used to. He looked more like a scared child clutching a security blanket.

"I'm okay," he said carefully. "Just... don't think I ever thought about it before. Anyway, I owe you an answer."

The answer was as frighteningly in-depth as V suspected it would be. A near-field combat system controlled YoRHa interactions with their weaponry. (The far-field system was for pod control and more or less enabled 9S to control pod combat abilities with his mind). There was some complicated mechanism that allowed solid weapons to move between matter states as either physical objects or as data, but the data was apparently not alterable. Meaning, in short, it was possible for weapons to break and require physical repair before they would be whole again. And apparently the golden rings were some kind of electromagnetic field that bound the weapon and android together?

9S was patient and took it slow, but it was like trying to understand the finer points of how that woman took demon parts and made devil breakers from them. It was exactly the same, in V's mind. Otherworldly energy bent to the will of machinery. Some of the weapons were clearly ancient relics, and undoubtedly had some kind of magic in them that androids accessed or processed by refining and restoring them. It was the only thing that made that primitive-looking spear's supposed ability to re-write machines to become allies make any sense.

"Anything else you want to know?" 9S said brightly.

"No. I'm sure you will go into infinite detail if I only ask, but it's unnecessary. What you have described is magic."

"Huh?! But I just…! V It's not magic, it's technology."

V held up his palm. The tattoos on his chest shifted and dulled, and a tiny vision of Shadow spun in his hand. "To an android, circuitry and systems. To me, tattoos. It is clear to me that we, and even the machines, manipulate the same element, but by different means."

9S' eyes widened beneath this visor. "You think it's the same thing, but with a different interface… I see, I get it!"

He looked like he was fit to burst with either pride or excitement, to the point that even V had to smile as he stood. "Though I've learned much, the trek has been long and I am reaching my limit."

"Okay. I'll split with you at the mall to pick up more supplies and meet you back on the rooftop."

They followed the curve of the cliff together, neither one eager to hop down and be faced with the numerous machines again. The breeze was warmer than V would have liked but refreshing enough and 9S questions run out, for now. Perhaps he had talked himself out in explaining his weapons or was busy with thoughts of procuring food and water.

They were at seven. Perhaps he could tease them toward eight. "Why do the forest machines toll that bell?"

9S tilted his head, and V did not need to see his eyes to know his expression was blank and confused beneath the blindfold.

"What bell?"


	21. A Curious World, Part 2

Exhaustion forgotten, V stood before the waterfall and cupped his ears.

"It's getting louder. Do you hear it?"

"I still don't—"

"He was talking to_ me_," Griffon snipped, extending a wing to brush 9S back and shuffling closer to V. "I hear something alright but it ain't bells. I don't think even a demon would sound like the shit I'm hearing, and honestly I don't think it's a great plan to be going toward it. Ain't a lot that can rub me the wrong way, but even the big guy was getting a little agitated here."

"Be that as it may, this may be the clue we were looking for. We must proceed."

Griffon sighed. "Yeah I thought you'd say that; just don't get in over your head. Let boy-bot take the first swing if it comes to that."

V glanced back at 9S. He was shifting his weight from foot to foot and rolling his heels. His head jerked at every stray splash and snapped twig and screaming machine in the distance, but he could not pick up what they were hearing.

"I prefer not to wander blindly," said V. "Is there anything that would have a bell nearby? Even a damaged one."

9S opened a digital map with a flick of his fingers. Half a dozen other sub-screens joined it, displaying waves and charts that made little sense to V, but 9S manipulated them deftly. The map zoomed in, for what good it did the rough, highly pixelated image. "There's a sub-structure of some kind to the north of the castle. Pod, do you have any record of it?"

"REPORT," whirred Pod 153. "NO DATA FOUND IN ARCHIVES. HOWEVER, QUERY TO CROSS-REGIONAL POD NETWORK RETURNED THIS IMAGE FOUND AT THE SITE SEVERAL YEARS PRIOR."

V moved to 9S side and stared at the remnants of a stained glass window. The glass had long since melted away under the onslaught of the sun, but the bars retained their shape.

The image of a three eyed face whitened V's knuckles. It couldn't possibly be… No. It wasn't one face. It was two faces. They were melded together as one, sharing the center eye. There were even two bars between the eyes to signify separate noses.

He let out a shaking breath, and only then noticed 9S had gotten just as tight as he had. "Do you know this symbol?"

"…Do you?" he asked, gesturing to V's still tight grip on his cane.

V took another deep breath and switched the cane to his other hand. "I thought I did, but no."

"That's eight..." 9S said in a painfully weak attempt to lighten the mood. "We killed a machine that had that symbol on it once. I don't know what it is, or what it means. He was the only being I ever saw have tattoos until you."

"You're sure he was only a machine?"

"Yeah. I watched him and his brother be born from this big cocoon of small machines." He shrank the image down, holding it in the palm of his hand. "They were machines obsessed with humanity too. Maybe this is where they found that symbol."

Griffon rumbled, and V shared his disquiet. Something wasn't right. But it was all they had to go on.

"Let's make haste."

* * *

The trees were forbiddingly dense beyond the castle's north side. Twisted roots as thick as V was tall intertwined along the forest floor, making their journey more one of leaping and climbing than walking. The lush canopy was pocked with white blocks that bent but did not break the mesh of branches they had fallen into. Machine presence had faded away to nothing in the difficult terrain and suffocating humidity.

When they arrived at their destination, V was ragged with exhaustion. The trek was hard enough, but the once solemn, distant toll had grown to deafening peals.

"You don't look so good," 9S fretted. He offered V the last, half-full full bottle. "Rest for a minute. I'll scout it out."

The remains were smaller than V thought they would be. Like wilted, blackened flowers, the old stone arches curled toward the sky above the modest clearing. The raised foundation was intact, as were the four cobblestone steps leading to the threshold. Very little of the walls remained, mostly just the bits around the cornerstones and the one stretch of wall where the frame of the stained glass window remained, just as they had seen it.

He poured water over his face and drank the rest. The restlessness of his familiars resonated just as deeply as the incessant bell. They saw it just as he did.

Too clean.

The building was a fossil for certain, but it didn't have the signs of decay that V had grown accustomed to. There was no rust on the iron frame of the stained glass window despite the punishing humidity. Moss had not made its home on even a single one of the black stones. The clearing did not make sense with the trees being so large. The gap in canopy was as neat and circular as a skylight. Not even a pebble of the tower fall had found its way in through the conspicuous hole.

"Nothing seems unusual," 9S called from inside. "But there's no bell, not even a broken one."

"Of course," said V, gripping his cane to help keep his steps from weaving as he moved toward the ruin. "This place is too small; there was probably never a bell here to begin with."

A smaller relief of the three-eyed symbol stared down at him from the highest stone on the threshold's arch. Griffon perched atop it, obscuring it with his claws. "Great! We found it, and I hate it even more than I thought I would, now let's get the hell outta here. This hike hasn't done you any favors and whatever is in here will still be here if we come back later."

"I think Griffon's right," said 9S. "I don't feel anything but I don't want to take any chances. Maybe if I can collect more data, I can figure out what you're picking up that I can't."

V pressed at his temples. The bell rang in time with the throb intensifying at the center of his forehead. "We are not so pressed for time that we must finish this here and now," he relented. "I will take…your counsel…"

His vision swam.

Griffon and 9S shouted.

The last thing he saw was 9S rushing toward him, hand extended to catch him as he fell.

* * *

He awakened in a field of black flowers. A red-hued light shone down from a dark, churning sky. Though his tattoos were gone and his hair had gone white, it was wariness rather than panic that got him to his feet. The ill-omened tolling of the bell was gone, replaced by an echoing susurration.

It wasn't hell, but it looked the part.

The scent and scorching heat of fire teased his senses. The flowers twitched and burst into flame and soot, spraying his body with cold black ash that smudged but wouldn't come off. A vision of his childhood home appears in shades of orange and red, burning down around an apparition in the shape of his mother. His memory of her came back suddenly; sharp enough to cut through the long, harsh years since he had last seen her. She looked so little like the portrait in the mansion's remains. Even the devil made in her image did not exactly match her.

She burned away too. Like everything else.

He watched from beneath knitted brows as his life was paraded in front of him. His days spent wandering, fighting, scrounging; a childhood of guerrilla war, gaunt, bony, fanged-Yamato swung with wild abandon, the only thing he could trust. Long forgotten shades of humans who had tried to care for him. The warmth of their smiles becoming the warmth of their blood as they were caught up in his battles.

They couldn't protect themselves. He couldn't protect them. He couldn't protect anything.

He didn't remember when it was that he had finally gone cold and embraced power as the only thing worth anything. There was no single moment that could be kicked up from the dust in the corners of his mind. If there was, he had no intention of waiting around to be shown.

"If you want me to despair," he called. "You will need much worse than this."

A ray of white light parted the red clouds. He could not see what was beyond, but its voice was clear.

_Power_, it whispered in a sweet song that promised everything. _Accept...the power of the gods._

"You lack comprehension if you went through the effort of digging through our memory and believed we were the type to accept such a thing," V scoffed.

_Accept...the love of the gods..._

"Not interested."

_Irrelevant... Accept us...or accept death._

So it all came back to death hanging over his head again.

His cane was not with him. His summons were not with him. 9S was not with him. He had nothing to fight with but his fists and no enemy but a disembodied voice in the sky. Death was certain, but the alternative was worse. He had lived as a slave once. He would never let that be his fate again.

"Take my life if you can," he said, standing straight and raising his chin. "My submission is out of the question."

The light sparked and reddened. V stared into it, refusing to buckle or bow even as felt his skin begin to harden. He glanced down.

His hands were turning into salt as pure and white as the pillars of the fallen tower.


	22. Nearly Human

To struggle like a worm was more indignity than V could have suffered through, but his mind searched frantically for some way to fight back.

There wasn't any pain to the creeping transformation, just a scratchy, tight pressure over his skin. An experimental attempt to flex his fingers found they moved, but barely. Teeth gritted, his eyes flicked in search of something, anything he could use. He forced himself to step forward despite rigid ankles and stiffening knees. The black flowers turned to dust as he weaved unsteadily through them.

The creep of the salt over his hips and shoulders forced him to stop. Thoughts of Vergil and Dante flashed through his mind. He was an eternity away from home; would it even change anything if he died there?

Where even was home? The crimson folds of his mother's shawl came to mind—a garden full of roses and the places he read as a boy. That home didn't exist. Even if it did, the version of himself that could claim that place was another man.

V's home was…Creaky leather and a jukebox that only worked when it wanted to. The scent of stale cigarette smoke and hot copper and metal polish. The charming, fearless twang of a woman he barely knew behind the wheel of a van that did the impossible.

Nero.

His fists would no longer respond, but he didn't need them to. He didn't need anything. So long as he could think and speak, he had a weapon. Baring his teeth at the blood-colored sky, he took several rapid breaths as the salt crept up over his belly and called out:

"_To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wildflower… Hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour…_" A familiar heat prickled along what skin he could still feel. He roared out what he remembered most clearly, the painting upon the page of the book that he had left behind crystal clear in his mind. "_A robin red breast in a cage puts all heaven in a rage; each outcry of the hunted hare a fiber from the brain does tear…_"

Violet energy sweltered around him. Without the cane to focus it, it amassed in his chest. The salt crept up over his chin, and he looked directly up into the pillar of light that had cursed him.

"_Every wolf's and lion's howl… raises from hell... A human soul…!_"

Demonic energy pulsed out and recoiled back on him. The burst of it leaving his body was arrow fast and powerful enough to knock him off his feet, sending him sprawling through the flowers. He skidded to a stop with a worrying crunch. The sky lit violet, but there was no sound. Nothing to indicate he'd hit anything. He coughed and struggled to get back onto his feet.

The salt sloughed off him like a brittle shell.

He froze and stared blankly at his intact fingers. Pale and pliant once more. He flexed the parts of his body that still had salt on them.

It collapsed away, piling like sand among the black ash.

"How curious..." he said with rising heat in his blood.

He brushed himself off, feeling all over again the intense rush of his own vitality. The light from above reddened and the salt crept over V with renewed vigor, but V tilted his head back and laughed with a malicious delight he hadn't felt since arriving there.

"Your tenacity is admirable," he purred, brushing loose salt from his shoulders. "But it appears I am out of your jurisdiction."

The bells tolled anew from on high, and V prepared himself.

"GET THE HELL OUTTA MY WAY YOU TONE DEAF BITCH!"

Lightning scattered among the clouds and the bells ceased. Griffon dived like a streaking blue comet, nearly crashing into V before spreading his wings and coming to a neat stop at eye level. "Well, Shakespeare, I'd say I told you so but I'd say we're well past that! Do you know how much work it is to carry you out of the woods even with that soda can's help?!"

"Is that why you're so late?" V asked nonchalantly. "How did you even find me?"

Griffon snorted. "I always know where you are, V. This is just a completely bullshit in-between-ish type location. Kinda in your head and kinda somewhere else, I don't really get it and it was a hassle to find you. What the fuck even is that up there?"

"The source of white chlorination syndrome... Some 'gods' still lurking in search of humans after ten thousand years. " He flicked salt from beneath his nails. "It didn't take."

"Well fancy that," Griffon crowed. "I'll find you a nice gold star to commemorate you not getting turned to paste without me around."

V smirked, and patted Griffon's neck. His unusually caustic temper meant he must have been quite worried. "My existence as Vergil's humanity or not… I am still a son of Sparda, it seems."

"Sure you are, V—if you're done waxing philosophical about your bloodline, you wanna address the weird mannequin-lookin' thing up there?"

V raised a brow and offered his arm to Griffon. "You said this is my mind, correct?"

"Sort of," Griffon muttered, perching heavily. "It's like a place between two dreams? If that makes sense. It probably doesn't make sense. I can't explain this shit, V."

It made perfect sense to V. They were at an interstice—his own dream and the dream of the gods who had destroyed this world brushing against one another. If his body was no longer anywhere near the church, he likely had more control of this place than it did. His investigations had nearly cost him his life, and he had no desire to further tempt fate.

He lifted his other arm and snapped.

The black flowers withered and scattered into the air. The clouds recoiled back. V thought he saw something vast and white with a mouth of only gnashing block teeth. A hint of a shape, a suggestion of sparks and hatred.

Like all his nightmares, V let it pass over him and when he woke, he could scarcely remember it.

* * *

Everything V had expected turning into salt would feel like awaited him on the other side of consciousness. Pain greeted him with energy of a mutt leaping into its beloved master's arms. His skin felt two sizes too small to contain his flesh, and he could have believed his stomach had been filled with the oily, scrap metal-clogged coastal waters. His hair stuck to his cheeks and forehead, but he couldn't imagine how that was possible. Sweat only existed as the fever dream of his cracked lips and dry tongue.

Sweltering sunlight beamed down from just above the white block sheltering his upper body from the worst of it. He had fallen in cloying humidity and awakened into Dust and grit stuck to his skin, far too much like the sensation of the salt for his comfort. When he tried to move, he realized too late that his cane was laid flat along his body. The portion that had not been shielded from the sun rolled, grazing his exposed navel, and he hissed.

A few feet away from his head, a white-capped head jerked up and an unobstructed face appeared. The blindfold was wrung to its absolute limit around 9S' fists, his arms locked just as tight around his knees, and his knees pulled so close to his chest that he resembled a folding chair more than a person. From under disheveled hair, his gray-blue eyes stared wide and dull.

He didn't speak, despite his slack mouth, so V licked his own dry lips. "How long…?"

"Three hours," 9S answered without moving.

"Where…?"

"The edge of the desert." Slowly, 9S' arms unraveled their crushing grip on the rest of his body. "Griffon and Pod flew you southwest as soon as you…fainted."

V managed a nod a closed his eyes. As he exhaled, his body sank comfortably into the dust. Had he ever been so exhausted in his life? A rapid scuffing made his eyes flick open, but it was only 9S. He was shuffled closer and was leaning over V with that same intense, fish-eyed stare.

"I'm alright," he reassured.

9S nodded, but his expression, or lack thereof, didn't change. V's thin, wasting voice was probably not convincing.

"I'm really alright, 9S."

"…Do you still hear it?"

The only thing to hear out there was the shift of the sand every time the breeze picked up. "No."

"Good…" He remained unnaturally stiff, but his gaze softened. "What happened to you…?"

V's mind was clogged and slow. Revealing that he wasn't human enough for the syndrome to take hold was a risk he couldn't take, especially with his body in such bad condition, but he couldn't think straight anymore.

"I met the gods," he said with a faint smile. "But they found me to be quite…indigestible."

9S' face twitched. "What does _that_ mean?"

He began to laugh in shallow, pitching heaves. "What does that even mean?! You just passed out in the middle of the woods and I didn't know what to do other that get you away from there and away from where someone might find you so I sent Griffon and Pod here because no one's ever here since the tower fall destroyed the outpost, and when I caught up your tattoos were all fading in and out and Griffon told me 'Don't do anything stupid boy-bot, I'm going in' and I sat here and dug through the archives for anything that could possibly help you or tell me what had happened to you only for you to wake up looking even worse than before you passed out and tell me—" His laughter intensified, high and wild like an animal. "—That you met gods and they tried to eat you?"

9S could be emotional, but this was new. His body shook so hard it looked like he would rattle himself to pieces. The hysterical laugh died down to reedy, shuddering breaths. His eyes set in a familiar glare with an unfamiliar glisten.

V stared in spite of his vision going fuzzy as he tried to process what he was seeing. "Are you…crying…?"

9S' fists went to rub the tears away, while his forearms moved to cover his face. He turned away as though he could hide it, even as his small shoulders continued to shake. There was no redness to his eyes. No flush to his cheeks. But they were wet all that same.

He was crying. Not only had his makers given him the form and mind of a child, they had given him the capacity to cry. Without thinking, V reached out. The unexpectedly stony weight of his forearm gave him pause, and a moment to realize what he was doing. But it was too late.

9S clutched the outreached hand in both his own, and his silent shudders grew more intense.

"I'm sorry…!" he sobbed. "I promised to protect you, but I didn't know what to do!"

"It's alright," V repeated clumsily. He almost said that he didn't either, but he wasn't prepared for the possibility of upsetting 9S further. "I'll explain properly later. I'm alright, just…very tired."

"Thank goodness." He made an effort to smile, but his face was a crumpled mess. "I was so scared…!"

Tears fell onto V's fingers. He had wondered if they would be oil or some other substitute fluid, but it was water; warm as any human's.

He could only watch in baffled awe as 9S slowly bowed forward as he wept, still holding onto his hand as though it was the focus of a desperate prayer.


	23. Body and Soul

V had proven too weak to walk.

9S, being too short to support him, had to practically carry him back to edge of the city. From there, he had managed to wrangle a moose that could more comfortably carry V back the rest of the way while 9S walked alongside to ensure the animal stayed calm.

The rooftop was out of the question. He judged the third floor high enough to be safe and set V down in the darkest corner possible. There was little in the way of debris around, but he tried to arrange at least enough cover to hide V from any chance passersby. There wasn't much he could do.

V had been sleeping ever since.

9S never left him. There was plenty to do to fill the time. The water bottles needed filling. A dozen small physical errors demanded maintenance. Yet 9S stayed. What if V woke up in dark, unfamiliar surroundings? He might panic. What if 9S went all the way out to the desert and V needed him? What if he just stopped breathing while he wasn't watching?

It was only as one day passed and stretched toward two that 9S stirred. Six hours was a long sleep for V. He was cresting forty.

He shifted his stiff jaw and licked his lips before whispering into the dark. "Hey…Griffon?"

That tattoo's shifted. A mysterious cloud not unlike particles of soot converged on a nearby window ledge and condensed into the shape of the blue eagle. The three-pupiled eyes regarded him with a kind of teasing malice, but he didn't really look at V or the pods any different.

"So you can hear me in there," said 9S. "Is V alright?"

Griffon snorted. "That all you called me for? Of course he's alright."

"But it's not normal for humans to sleep this long, right? What if he's starving or dehydrated or something? There's no way for him to take in any energy."

"You sure are a workaholic, huh boy-bot."

9S frowned. Hadn't someone else called him that recently? "Why aren't you worried? Is it a witch thing?"

"Ha! Yeah, sure, call it that, gives me the warm and fuzzies every time. Look, the long and short is that the contract we got goin' means my strength comes from V and with my life tied to his I take him not dying as a matter of big personal interest—and he ain't dyin'. He's probably the strongest I've ever seen him." He ruffled his wings and gave a low snigger. "Not that that's a high peak to climb."

9S sighed and lifted to his feet, wincing as fluid flushed into places that he had been sitting on too long. "Alright, so he's…okay. But what the hell actually happened to him?"

Griffon shrugged. "Exactly what he said, he got in a fight with some old bullshit gods that were—" He turned and glared at Pod 042 where he hovered idly over V. "—_**Supposed**_ to be dead."

9S followed his gaze and his brows drew together. "Pod 042, did you know something about this?"

"UNCLEAR. PROPOSAL: SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON SHOULD CLARIFY."

"There's nothin' to clarify! You said there was no chance of him catching that stupid chlorination disease!"

9S' head flicked between Griffon and Pod 042. "What is he talking about?"

"DETAILS OF WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME PRESENT IN GESTALT REPORT #1 FOUND BY UNIT 9S DURING PREVIOUS DESCENT MISSION. BASED ON ARCHIVAL DATA, SUBJECT V WAS PROJECTED TO HAVE A 0% CHANCE OF CONTRACTING THE DISEASE."

"Looked to me like you got your math fucked up, soda can."

"NEGATIVE. ARCHIVAL ANALYSIS AND PROJECTIONS WERE CORRECT. HYPOTHESIS AND UPDATED ANALYSIS: REMNANT OF INTER-DIMENSIONAL ENTITY "GIANT" IS PRESENT AT THE RUINED STRUCTURE IN THE FOREST. IN ORDER FOR SUBJECT V'S CHANCES OF CONTRACTING WHITE CHLORINATION SYNDROME TO REMAIN AT 0%, THE UNKNOWN STRUCTURE SHOULD BE AVOIDED."

"Well thanks asshole, but it doesn't matter anymore," Griffon growled, sparks jumping between the three prongs of his beak. "The syndrome couldn't keep a hold on him. Lucky for you."

9S snapped from his analytic trance and stepped between them. "Easy, the last thing V needs is for you guys to start a fight right now. I'm not happy this happened either, but I'd prefer to focus on what we need next. Isn't there something you could do?"

Griffon sighed and rolled his eyes. Seeing the three pupils move synchronously made 9S' own eyes hurt. "Look boy-bot, instead of bothering me, why don't you do something useful like go do your supply run."

"But what if the machines—"

"Oh for fuck's sake, kid, loosen your bolts! I'm not gonna let V die because of some half-rusted overgrown wind-up toys!" He spread his wings, batting the air with increasing agitation until static began to pop on 9S' skin.

"Get the hell out of here and don't come back without food!"

* * *

9S paused at the end of the cracked asphalt and stared at the dusty distance where the oppressive climate baked everything to a bleached beige. He didn't look forward to the sand in his shoes or the heat taxing the limits of his coolant system, and he couldn't help frowning over his shoulder down the long road that led back to V.

In truth he was a little glad for some distance. The last thing V probably remembered was 9S crying.

The memory of it made his temperature rise well before the environment had a chance to. It was another display of the frightening weight humanity had to his programming, but it was more than that too. Everything he had felt was so muddy and intertwined—the guilt and fear flooding from everywhere within him. Everything was such a blur of visual distortions and strained motor control. It took Pod 153 warning him that V would be defenseless if he let his systems take damage for him to calm down.

To look back and know that it was all a trick of his programming and feel anger at the cruelty of his design would have been easy and simple. He would have preferred it. Instead, he wrestled a consistent urge to stay at V's side and a thousand increasingly irrational what ifs that refused him any sense of V's safety or security despite Griffon's assurance. There was something biting and personal about the relief he felt when V said he was alright, and he worried he might have revealed himself more than intended. So much for prohibiting his emotions.

He crammed his hands into his pockets with a sigh and felt the wad of his blindfold. Ruined as it was, he replaced it and hoped it wouldn't be awkward when V woke up.

...Hopefully, he'd wake up soon.

"Pod, give me a summary of each of the Gestalt Reports."

Pod 153 obliged while he focused on traversing the increasing unstable sands. 9S remembered reading them once, but they were dull as history books to him at the time. They were history books. From a time so long ago that it shouldn't have mattered anymore. Now, as the information was recited to him, it seemed critically important.

A giant and a dragon appearing out of nowhere, magic maso particles that caused humans to turn to salt, Gestalts and Replicants, relapses, clinical trials, human experimentation with maso-

"They experimented with it even then?" 9S interrupted. "Even though it was killing them?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. THE GESTALT AND REPLICANT SYSTEM RELIED ON MASO SO IT MUST BE INFERRED THAT SOME PARTICLES WERE ACQUIRED WHICH DID NOT CAUSE WHITE CHLORINATION."

9S hummed and let her continue. It was a lot of information, yet never quite enough to answer the kinds of questions he had. Particularly about relapses.

Devola and Popola's data had mentioned relapses. Time had stolen the context for their memories, and he had not been in the right state of mind to consider the true meaning of the reports they carried. Their claim that they were made when there were still people was pre-Gestalt. Real people, as they were before white chlorination, or the ominously named 'Legion' had scourged them. Humanity after those things had fallen because of something involving a being called the 'Original', but what exactly? They seemed so desperate to keep things stable; no way they hadn't done everything in their power to prevent the worst outcome. They were even the ones who sent the last of the Replicant data to the moon.

Something tugged in his chest as he pressed through the sandstorm. Replicants were supposed to be shells for humans to return to. And yet they had gained sentience. Acted as aware entities for at least 600 years. It had to be assumed they were all flesh and blood, even if they were partially made of maso. Just as he had to assume that the human soul was not something that could be easily recorded and put into a data bank.

If given the chance, would Devola and Popola have saved their souls instead? Wasn't that what made humans what they were? Was it enough that the Replicants had become aware, or was that the desperation of the Devola and Popola models? It was all so complicated. It was all so…Familiar.

"REPORT: UNIT 9S IS VEERING OFF COURSE BY OVER 15 DEGREES."

"Hm? Oh, right, thanks."

The sandstorm was no place to think about something like that, he chided himself. And anyway, it was old news. Nothing to be done about it. He told himself this, but he was already busily crunching probabilities when he spotted a palm tree through the gusting winds. If he had uncovered eleven reports in this zone, it was likely that this was where it had all taken place. There had to be more data around, he just had to look for it. Maybe Emil would know something. He was scatterbrained, but he had been around at least as long as the aliens. There was nothing 9S could truly do with the information, but he craved it all the same.

Maybe a memory would stir if he could just talk to Emil about it for a while.

He emerged on the other side of the sandstorm back into the baking sunlight. It was a short trot to the oasis between the buried rooftops of old buildings. Shade awaited him, as did the crystal clear and relatively cool waters. A few splashes on his face and neck rinsed sand from him and helped his temperature regulation. Even with a full supply of coolant, extended exposure to the desert sun could easily overheat androids no matter how advanced they were. As human as they looked, sweat was one of the few things they either didn't or couldn't replicate. He might have to ask for a cloak of his own at this rate.

He took off his boots and socks and shivered as he shoved his feet down into the damp sand at the edge of the oasis. A foot or so down it was practically cold.

He squatted down and filled the bottles as carefully as possible to avoid getting sand inside. Only one thing didn't make sense. "V said he's from the past right?"

"UNKNOWN. SUBJECT V BELIEVES HE HAS BEEN MOVED IN DIMENSION RATHER THAN TIME. HE REPORTS THAT NONE OF THE INCIDENTS IN THE GESTALT REPORTS OCCURRED IN HIS TIME."

"Well yeah… But he's still human even if he's from some other time or dimension. I'm glad he's alive… but I can't figure out how he beat white chlorination syndrome. There's no record of any humans resisting it is there?"

"NEGATIVE. HYPOTHESES: WHITE CHLORINATION CAN BE BEATEN BY MAGIC, WHITE CHLORINATION CANNOT AFFECT SUBJECT V BECAUSE HE IS NOT A HUMAN FROM THIS DIMENSION, OR SUBJECT V IS NOT HUMAN."

9S jerked and nearly dropped the third bottle. His lips pressed together, but there was no use getting upset. Like Pod 042, she was just making conjectures based on the data provided to her. It didn't mean she was anywhere near right considering what a unique situation it was.

"I'm going to go with the first option." He stood and rubbed tiredly at his hair. Going back then and there would have been fine by him, but Griffon would probably fry him. "We don't know when he's gonna wake up… What can I bring back that won't spoil?"

"VARIOUS FORMS OF PLANT MATTER ARE EDIBLE BY HUMANS AND GENERALLY DO NOT SPOIL AT THE RATE OF ANIMAL MATTER."

"I don't know anything about plants, Pod, not where it concerns eating them. What if we give him something poisonous? Do you have any guides in your archive that could help with that?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, ARCHIVAL BOOKS WILL LIKELY NOT DESCRIBE EDIBLE FLORA IN THE AREA AND WOULD BE INEFFICIENT. PROPOSAL: REQUEST ASSISTANCE FROM RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM."

9S clenched his eyes shut and groaned at the desert sky.


	24. Heart and Mind

Frozen on his thin legs and poised on his toes to flee at a moment's notice, 9S felt more like an imitation of a deer than of a human. The effort of just standing in front of Anthurium's set him on edge in a way no combat had since his re-activation, and they hadn't even exchanged words yet.

Anthurium bobbed his head in his usual polite greeting, and then, seeing that 9S didn't immediately make himself scarce, swiveled around and leaned forward onto his desk, prepared to provide his full attention. His distressingly easy-going smile came complimentary.

As did his comfortable silence while 9S' scoured his mind with plummeting composure for something intelligent to say.

"I'm sorry!" His eyes and fists clenched simultaneously. Okay, intelligent was off the table. "—for before, I mean."

Anthurium gave a slow shrug and a slower smile. "Don't worry about it. You in need of something?"

9S skin prickled. Uncomfortable heat spread up through his neck and into his palms. He couldn't sweat, but itchiness was apparently within his design specifications, and managed to completely blank him on what he was there for. It was all he could do to regurgitate the last question from V that had caught him off guard. "Do you have any salt?"

"Salt, huh? Sorry to say, but you might have to pay a visit to the other coast for salt."

"I-I see."

His insides felt like they were being vacuum sealed to his skin. Despite his attempts to tell himself how irrational it was to get so upset over so little—over nothing, in fact—the hurried pulse of his black box could not be calmed. This much volatility wasn't normal. The stress of V's sudden illness had to have caused an issue somewhere that had gone undiagnosed and uncorrected while he ignored his maintenance to wait for V to wake up.

While his intentions were selfless, it may not have been wise for him to visit an android he already knew had a strange effect on him.

"There was actually something a lot more important than the salt..." He stood straight and tried to focus. Just get it over with quick, and he could move on. "Do you know anything about things aside from meat that humans ate?"

Anthurium tilted his head and raised his goggles. "Like plants?"

"I guess, yeah. I'm looking for edible things that might grow around here, but I don't really know where to start."

"What for?"

_Shit._

He would have never been unprepared for such an obvious question if his head was in the right place. Instead he fumbled for an explanation that didn't sound suspicious or give too much away.

"I just…think it's worth knowing."

Anthurium relaxed back into his seat and crossed his arms with a little smile. "Worth knowing, huh…?"

The itchiness crawled from 9S' neck to his lower spine like an army of biting insects determined to burrow into his torso. A lame lie on his part didn't deserve that kind of helplessly bittersweet grin, even if it was for a good cause.

"If you want to know, then," Anthurium said, rising from his seat. He ambled back into the shade of the tent and reached up on top of a haphazard stack of boxes. "Go easy on me though, my specialty was meat."

What he tossed down was a ratty-looking book bound in leather so rough the texture ghosted across 9S' sensors the longer he looked. Between the faded brown bindings, the pages were thick, unevenly edged, and more yellow than white. Primitive, in short. The contents were a different matter. The drawings within weren't impressive, but their annotations were as painstakingly made as any technical document. Though 9S preferred the easy accessibility of data, it must have taken ages to compile so much information letter by small and immaculately drawn letter.

"Anthurium this is… This is amazing. I can't take this."

"Sure, and you couldn't take that pack I gave you either." He sank back into his seat and folded his hands over his stomach. "Is it for that tall fellow you've been coming through with?"

Though his breath caught in his throat, there was no need to lie. "…Yeah."

"Then take it." He lowered back into his seat and adjusted his goggles back over his eyes. "If it'll make your friend happy, that's more important than it gathering dust around here."

Stinging words, though 9S couldn't tell just which part of them stung. The concept that he and V looked like friends to someone who only ever saw them for a few seconds at a time was interesting, but he didn't think that was what bothered him. V blending in like his companion was a logical conclusion of giving him resistance clothes, and yet…

"Do we—do he and I really… look like friends?" This time the seeking innocence in his voice was unfeigned. It trembled slightly, as if he were afraid of the answer as much as he needed to know it.

"Whoever he is to you," said Anthurium. "You look alive when you're with him."

9S cracked a smile and hummed thoughtfully to mask mild disappointment. He had been hoping for a different sort of answer, but it wasn't as if Anthurium had ever spoken to V. Still, it was something to think about.

"Thanks. Is there uhm… anything I can do for you? Something I could find maybe?"

"Appreciated, but I can't say there's anything I want."

"Will you let me know if you change your mind?"

Again, that warm smile accompanied by a relaxed nod.

V's smiles were so cold that when he bothered to express them, they only emphasized the distance between him and 9S. It was like they were designed to keep him at precisely the distance V thought he should stay at. The warmest smiles he had seen from V yet had gone to Griffon and to Pod 042 of all things. Anthurium's smiles were just the opposite. Like being welcomed into a home that wasn't his. One 9S didn't really feel he had any right to enjoy the comforts of. It raised a thick lump in his throat.

He still couldn't name just what it was he felt when he spoke with Anthurium. Loneliness was familiar to him and came to mind, but it wasn't that. It felt peripheral, like a something that lived on the opposite shore of whatever new emotional territory 9S was walking on. He had no guides or familiar paths to navigate; no one had ever brought him to such a place. Not 2B or his operators. Not anyone.

Quietly, he promised himself he would use the notes to make V the best meal he could. It might not be a feast, but it was something. Just a little piece of what Anthurium had intended.

He wished with tight fists that he could have told him.

* * *

The high cliff looking over the ravine would have made for a great spot to sit and flip through the book, if 9S' eyes had not immediately drifted to the woods beyond the waterfall.

His fingers twitched with tactile memory. How could someone who weighed so little in 9S' arms have fallen to the earth with such frightening speed? That was the first thing that had crossed his mind. It just kept repeating as random information, some important and some not, flooded 9S' systems: The throb of V's pulse in his neck as his head lolled back. The empty green bottle glistening on the stone where V left it. The pairs of teeth, eighteen all told, that lined Griffon's tongue as he yelled words 9S could not process. The indifferent three-eyed symbol staring down from the arches.

That one had snapped him out of it. To him, that symbol represented an enemy he knew he could fight rather than something as nebulous and alien to him as human disease. So, he fought, however he could. Whether it was 9S' transport order or Griffon's help or V's own magic or some combination of the three, V had managed to beat back white chlorination syndrome.

But it had not been an easy or painless victory.

Pod 042 might be right—they had been fine up until they got close to the place. But V had heard it, even as far out as it where 9S stood now. Calling him. _Luring_ him. As long as that place existed, whatever gods were there would always be a threat to V.

"QUERY: WHY IS UNIT 9S NOT UTILIZING THE REPORT PROVIDED BY RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM?"

"We're going back into the woods," he said forebodingly, taking off at a dash. "We have to destroy that structure."

Pod 153 whipped around in front of him. "PROPOSAL:** STOP**."

The unusually blunt and aggressive attempt to dissuade him got a pause from 9S, but not a stop. He brushed by her easily.

"THIS POD CANNOT RECOMMEND THE INTENDED PLAN OF ACTION," she continued from just behind his head. "ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL 9S HAS BEEN READING IN RELATION TO WITCHES AND WITCHCRAFT SUGGESTS THAT STRUCTURE MAY CONSTITUTE A FORM OF CONTAINMENT. POSSIBILITY OF RELEASING THE ENTITY WITHIN IS GREATER THAN 0%."

9S slowed. Just before he reached the edge of the cliff, he stopped. He reached out, bracing himself against nearby tree, and closed his eyes.

"Damnit… Damnit!" He punched the bark hard enough to send splinters dancing across the moss-coated stones. "How can I protect him if I can't destroy the only thing so far that's endangered him?!"

"PROPOSAL: DO NOT ALLOW UNIT V TO INTERACT WITH STIMULI THAT UNIT 9S CANNOT DETECT, AND FOLLOW PROPOSAL PROVIDED BY POD 042 TO KEEP RE-INFECTION PROBABILITY AT 0%."

He glared out at the wooded horizon half obscured by thick ozone and rising mist. His teeth sank into his bottom lip until he was startled by moisture dripping down his cheeks.

"What the—?"

He rubbed furiously at his face, but somehow that only made fresh tears come faster, leading to a vicious string of wiping and cursing through gritted teeth. On the verge of either sobbing or screaming, he crumpled against the tree and sank to his knees. "What is wrong with me?!"

"ANALYSIS: SEVERE PSYCHOLOGICAL SHOCK OF SUBJECT V'S COLLAPSE HAS CAUSED DAMAGE TO MEMORY REGIONS LEADING TO INABILITY TO REGULATE EMOTIONAL STATES. PROPOSAL: 9S SHOULD UNDERGO MAINTENANCE TO PREVENT RECKLESS BEHAVIORS AND IDEATIONS."

"Well, I can't exactly do that here!"

He realized he was yelling. It wasn't really at the pod. Or at himself. Like his tears, the volume increase was just something that was happening to him despite his attempts to think his way through the strange tide of emotions. He expanded his chest until he felt the subtle tautness of his artificial fibers and released it all in a single resounding bellow. Birds scattered. The splash and clop of moose fleeing echoed up from the nearby stream.

He felt better. But he was still crying.

Stubbornly, he scooted himself back against a gnarled root and pulled Anthurium's book back out. He had to hold it up high where he couldn't ruin the pages with his ridiculous tears. If he couldn't go deal with whatever was out in the woods, he was damn well going to bring V back the best food he could find.

Whatever unimpeded anger he was dealing with got him most of the way through the book. The tears almost stopped about twenty pages in, but he made the mistake of pausing to try and wipe them. They continued unabated until he was practically half-way through. Having learned his lesson properly by then, he kept reading.

Pod marked several locations on the map. Supposedly there were a great number of interesting things that could be picked from the forest. Mint, wild onions, cattails, burdock, and assortment of flowers and little berries he was nervous about getting right... Clover and dandelions; he knew those well. Their ability to grow fast in bad soil or in concrete meant they pretty much had a monopoly on areas where there were a lot of conflicts. And every single part of them was edible so he couldn't get them wrong if he tried. He flipped a few more pages out of interest and stopped. Wild oranges descended from a local strain once referred to as 'satsuma' were deep in the northwest part of the woods.

According to the pod they had been very popular with humans. And they provided a nutrient that was supposedly good for fending off illnesses.

He clapped the book shut and hopped to his feet. "You have that marked down right? Do you think they're growing right now?"

"UNKNOWN. PROCEED TO AREA MARKED ON MAP."

If he didn't know any better, he'd have thought she sounded a little worn out. He wouldn't have blamed her—he was worn out by himself too.

The little bit of laughter he managed felt surprisingly good. "Hey, Pod? …Thank you."

Pod 153 slowly swiveled in the air to face him. "…WHAT IS THE REASON FOR UNIT 9S' EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE?"

"You've done your best to keep me from getting too wound up and have been really supportive…"

"POD 153 IS ASSIGNED TO SUPPORT UNIT 9S."

"Well, yes, but... It's more than that…"

He shuffled his feet and plucked at the seam of his glove. His memories, half-processed though they were, contained a version of himself he understood but no longer completely identified with. He could still grasp everything he had been feeling easily. It hadn't really been that long. But something was different. Not in the way he thought of things, but in the way he felt about them.

And yeah, most likely it was just his memory damage, and this would be looked back on as a weird episode he'd had after he completed maintenance. But if he was in the right state of mind right then and there, there wasn't anything wrong with riding it out, was there?

"After… After the Bunker fell. And everything—happened. You were doing your best to keep me functional even though I yelled at you and ignored you."

He stopped fidgeting and looked up at her blank chassis properly. "Thank you... For trying to save me from myself."

"NEITHER APOLOGY NOR GRATITUDE IS NECESSARY FOR SUPPORT TO CONTINUE."

"I know, but it's the principle of the thing, you know?" He sat a hand gently atop her case and grinned. "I wouldn't have gotten to meet V without your support."

"THIS POD DOES NOT FULLY GRASP THIS 'PRINCIPLE'; HOWEVER, ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF SUPPORT EFFORTS IS APPRECIATED. THIS POD PROMISES TO CONTINUE PROTECTING UNIT 9S."

9S smile brightened and he held out a fist to her. Her tiny mechanical fist bumped his, and it was almost like nothing had ever changed.

Luckily, he didn't have enough water in reserve to do any more crying.


	25. Dandelion

Consciousness lagged several seconds behind the opening of V's eyes. The muted light and slab of gray concrete far too close to his face didn't help. It wasn't until the textured grooves in the stone began to play tricks on his vision that he realized he was awake. Every part of him was heavy with exhaustion, not for lack of sleep but for excess of it. Stiffness and creaks answered even the most tentative efforts to move his body. He managed to lift his wrists and splay his fingers up just barely enough to squint down through the gloom at them.

_Don't strain yourself,_ said a voice from within him. _Gang's all here._

Reassured, he let his hands drop and closed his eyes again. Sleep was out of the question, but for a moment it was good to just lay there in that mildly claustrophobic hole and breathe. He felt like he had been beaten within an inch of his life, but he was still alive.

Alive and **safe**.

A pleasant smell struck him as his faculties slowly returned. A green, grassy sort of scent that summoned old memories of reading in gardens he hadn't seen in bloom in decades. Old trees that he liked to climb and shaded patches he napped in felt crystal clear to him, as though he had walked those long-lost places only days ago. In digging through his mind, the gods had given fresh form to faded things.

He was even less eager to daydream than he was to sleep. He slid, wincing, from the concrete lean-to until he could at least sit upright.

Pod floated down and bobbed cordially at eye level. "GOOD MORNING, V."

V opened his mouth to respond and found his tongue unwilling to participate.

Pod's antenna lifted and spun, and he floated off to the side and returned with a full bottle of water in his claws. V sighed with gratitude he couldn't yet speak and wet his mouth with a few drops. He poured more into his hand and wiped it over his face and up through his hair. The sensation of accumulated filth was enough to form a pit in his stomach that left him even less interested in drinking more water.

"How long has it been?" His voice was a deep, unrecognizable croak in his own ears.

"REPORT: UNCONSCIOUS STATE PERSISTED FOR 57 HOURS AND 12 MINUTES."

No wonder it felt like his clothes were half-fused to his body. He rolled his shoulders and pawed at unreachable tension deep between his shoulders. More than food or water, he wanted a bath. Even a shower would do so long as it was hot.

Short, quick footsteps rebounded off the bare floors and ceilings before finding their escape through the open windows. They stopped as soon as their source came into sight around a corner and froze in place.

"You're awake!"

"So I am."

Unconsciously, he drew his arms in around himself as 9S approached him. His eyes hunted for details in the shape of his cheeks and the position of his hands for any sign of what he might be thinking, or worse, feeling. He was no condition to deal with another emotional outburst. It came as no surprise that 9S was wearing his blindfold again. V hadn't bawled like that since he was a child, but he would never have been able to show his face to anybody who saw him in that condition.

Luckily, 9S seemed to have cooled down since their last encounter. He dropped into a deep squat in front of V and peered up at him as earnestly as ever.

"You okay…?"

Up close, 9S was strangely…scruffy. If not for the roll of wire mesh tucked under his arm, he could have easily been a normal boy coming home from a long day of play in places he probably shouldn't have been.

"Stiff," V answered slowly. He craned his neck in another futile attempt to ease his soreness. "But that's to be expected. I will live. Why are you carrying netting?"

With a self-satisfied smile, 9S pointed to a bright green pile of leaves—undoubtedly the source of the fresh green scent V had noted in the air. "I didn't know when you'd wake up, so I found plants instead of meat. Pod said I should wash them before you ate them, but since they're all so small, I needed something to keep them getting lost in the water."

He gathered up the whole pile and quickly but tenderly stuffed it into his pack. "I didn't think you'd be awake, yet—I'll bring them back as fast as possible; you must be really hungry."

V's stomach turned as though it were in the middle of a nightmare. He wanted food even less than he wanted water. "I've had far more than my fill of rest. I will come with you."

The moment he got on his feet, his head filled with static.

"V? V-Whoa!"

Without any conscious thought on his part, he had put a bracing arm up against the near wall. His chin flattened the tooth that hung from his neck against his thin chest with worrying pressure given how weightless he felt. He found he wasn't standing as much as he was being held up by a convenient placement of walls and limbs—only half of which were his own.

"You can't just get up and go like that," 9S wheezed from practically underneath him. The motherly tone of the scolding was lost on V, given it sounded like he 9S was speaking from the other side of an especially luxurious pillow. "You don't have to lie back down, but don't rush yourself. I can handle washing some plants."

Bewildered, V allowed himself to be sat down.

9S left him there to gather his thoughts and let his head float back down into his proper place. After only a few minutes, a vaguely familiar uneasiness came over him. He shot back to his feet, suddenly short of breath and weaker than a failing heart, but full of motivation. He stumbled to the nearest window, which was half clogged by the collapse of a neighboring building, and dry-heaved.

Sweat rose on his skin like goosebumps, following a skulking heat that started at his lower back, crept up his bony spine, raised the hairs on his nape, and finally flushed his face. A violent cramp just above his navel jerked his scrawny frame, and he wretched hard enough to pop several of his joints.

Dry salt spilled from his lips over the dilapidated rubble. It spared him the noxious taste of bile, but instead left his throat raw and stinging as the grains poured out. He reflexively wiped his mouth, but just as quickly began to spit to get the overwhelming taste of salt out of his mouth.

Griffon whistled. _Yikes._

V almost laughed at the dry remark, were he not so busy scraping stray granules from his lips. He had thought it was strange that there were no physical signs of his brush with the gods. The experience had been so visceral, but there had been no salt left behind when 9S carried him out of the desert.

Lo and behold, he hadn't gotten away quite as cleanly as he thought.

With hopefully the last offending evidence of the experience expelled, he felt infinitely better. Enough that his mouth tingled, and his tongue curled in anticipation as he reached for the water he had previously ignored. It was lukewarm. He didn't care. Swishing the taste of salt out of his mouth was its own reward, on top of which draining the bottle in a single greedy drink was just an extra treat.

Finally, he was able to take a deep breath, stand straight, and organize himself. His cane glinted against the wall near where he had been laying. He wrapped his fingers around the handle. It wasn't anything he needed, but he planted it at his side anyway. Having a weapon in his grip was familiar and soothing after the unexpected way things had turned out.

Little things he had seen but not truly processed jumped out at him anew. The black clothes V had arrived in were folded neatly on the ledge of the nearest open window. Atop them, basking in the eternal sunlight, lay a sprig of tiny, white blossoms with attractively curled petals. He brushed his hair back and leaned down to catch their pleasing, citrusy scent. A much larger bouquet of them rested against the leaning slab that had covered him while he slept. Looking at it from the outside, it was clearly meant to keep him hidden or maybe just block out some of the light, or perhaps both.

Peering in, he found not one but two cloaks, one carefully folded where his head would have been, and the other splayed haphazardly over the floor. It must have been covering him before he got up.

He meandered around the bend 9S had come from and halted. What he could be called a cauldron sat in the corner. It looked precisely like the kind of thing that would have been somewhere in the forest castle. A bed of faintly smoking ash separated it from the floor, and it was full to the brim with the floating remains of boiled dandelions. Wisps of steam floated up, warming the room with an earthy scent.

Several sheets of metal, some large and some small, were strewn along the floor. Each had been beaten roughly into the shape of a basin (with 9S' fists, he wondered?) and were so clean they might have been reflective if not for their scoured surfaces. They must have been makeshift bowls, but they looked more like over-sized dog dishes.

Another sprig of white flowers sat in one of them, carefully placed atop a leather-bound book.

A tug in his heart pulled him toward it. He picked it up with images of the book he'd left behind fluttering through his mind. Was it too much to hope for poetry this far in the future?

The moment he opened it and began to take in the contents, his eyes softened, and a melting smile raised his lips. The roughness of the cover didn't stem from age, but from being handmade. It wasn't crafted for any lofty print, but for the simple notes on flora within. Dry and informational though the words were, every letter was written with care and focus. This was someone's much beloved work, and he flipped each page with appropriately gentle brushes of his fingertips.

There wasn't a single scratched out word or malformed stroke in the whole thing.

An awed whisper escaped him as he closed it. _"Little lamb, who made thee…?"_

"REPORT: THOSE ARE THE FIELD NOTES OF RESISTANCE MEMBER ANTHURIUM."

"Anthurium… That man in the forest?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

V gave a faint hum. He knew the book was certainly not the work of 9S. But as he looked around and compared the notes to what had been gathered, he suddenly understood why 9S looked so disheveled.

"He's been hard at work, hasn't he…?"

"UNIT 9S WANTED TO BE CAPABLE OF CARING FOR SUBJECT V IN THE EVENT OF PROLONGED ILLNESS."

V pursed his lips, and carefully placed the book back on the plate. He crossed his arms, and found his fingers drumming busily at the handle of his cane. He had lost time. If not for his insistence on chasing the only unusual thing aside from himself, he might already have completed the rest of his work in Pod 042's index. Instead he had been laid out for days, helpless. To wake and find that on top of his lost time, 9S had clearly spent the days anticipating things V might need was more than he could bear.

He paced busily around the bend, back to the other half of the floor's barren space. There was nothing he needed there; he just couldn't stand looking at so much of 9S' effort. At least in that room it was basic needs.

The flowers drew his eyes to them. Bright and pleasant and entirely without practical purpose as far as he could tell.

Mostly basic needs.

V rubbed at the bags under his eyes, and reminded himself that 9S was built, not born. Everything that had happened in the ruins revolved around the echoes of humanity. 9S never said it outright, but between the reports and the way he was careful to keep V away from the standard androids, there had to be a sort of base imperative that made him keen on keeping humans safe. Some of this behavior had to be programming. But how much sway did that hold, exactly? Enough to find food and water, V could understand. Even Griffon had proved he could consider the basic needs of a human and take steps to acquire clothes.

9S was dozens of levels above that, though. Simple as a child, but every boast he made about his model type was proved through his constant absorption and integration of information on what a human needed.

That still didn't explain the flowers.

He paced back around the corner and nearly ran into 9S.

"Up already?" His mouth twisted and he looked V quickly up and down. "Well… you do look a lot better."

V thought briefly of the pile of salt that had left his body, and quietly nodded. "I was just a bit quicker to rise than I should have been after being prone so long. I told you, I'm alright."

"Just groggy?" 9S teased, upending the dripping mesh into one of the empty metal plates "There we go. You really do look a lot better; I guess you don't need oranges after all."

V blinked. He couldn't tell if he was still sluggish or if 9S was simply riding a train of thought that he didn't have the right ticket for. "Oranges?"

"Yeah, do you like them? There's a bunch of old orange trees in the forest kingdom. I tried to find some, but none of the ones I saw looked ready. The flowers were nice though, and the archives said it was common for sick humans to receive flowers, blankets, and tea."

V sighed. So that was why there were flowers all over and a pot of boiled dandelions. And a blanket… "Is that why there's a second cloak now?"

There was that shy but beaming smile again. Blindfold or no, there was nothing unreadable about that smile or his rapid chatter.

"I mean, it's practical for me too. If I'm going to be going to the oasis I have to pay more attention to my sun exposure. Androids aren't quite as efficient as humans at regulating body temperature, so we're actually pretty susceptible to overheating. The desert is…well, you were there. It only gets worse on the way to the oasis." He jumped up and gestured energetically at the freshly washed foliage. "But don't worry about me! You haven't eaten in like three days, don't let me keep you!"

V had only been half listening. He was preoccupied with the flecks of dirt on 9S' cheek and knees, and the mussed hairs sticking up from his head. He needed a bath almost as much as V did.

9S interrupted his thoughts by wagging one of the smaller bowls to him. A single soggy dandelion flower floated atop liquid the color of maple syrup.

V stared at the dubious offering. Clashing scents fill his nose and he looked wearily up at 9S. "Do you have the ability to taste?"

9S paused and leaned in conspiratorially. "Are we still playing 20 questions?"

V managed to suppress his sigh but not the dramatic roll of his eyes. He could beat this world's gods at their own game but getting out of this silly game with 9S was clearly an impossibility.

"Sure."

Rather than ask a question immediately, 9S brought the cup toward his face. He hesitated at the last second. "Just how bad are you expecting this to taste?"

"Try it and find out," said V. Perhaps this game wasn't so bad after all.

9S e gulped and parted his lips. He managed a short, noisy sip before his shoulders convulsed forward. His forearm rushed to cover his mouth, likely to keep him from spitting directly in V's face. With a great deal of groaning, he managed to choke it down, but his grimace persisted, and he flapped his tongue rapidly as though that might get rid of the taste faster. "It's so bitter!"

"Fancy that." V relieved 9S of the cup to take his own sip. It was beyond bitter. The flavors of the roots, leaves, and flowers had all muddled together into an unpleasant, over-boiled mess. It was more like dandelion stew than tea. He eyed the ashes below the pot.

"Allow me to guess the nature of your experiment… You boiled your findings for an hour or two, because you believed that to be the secret to a stronger tea."

9S looked both crestfallen and amazed. "Yeah… How'd you know?"

"A young and foolish boy I once knew did the same the first time he tried to make tea for someone." V chuckled and let his eyes drop. "I will have to prepare a proper cup for you sometime. So you'll know what it should taste like, of course."

The wideness of 9S eyes could not be seen, but it could quite clearly be heard. "You know how to make tea?"

"Call it a hobby," he said casually, and sat in front of the pile of greenery. "And that's ten."

It wasn't the worst first attempt at finding plants to eat. He seemed to recall that Vergil's first forays at feeding himself outside of civilization hadn't gone…a lot worse.

Across from him, 9S was discreetly attempting to snag something from the other side of the mound. In trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, he managed to be painfully obvious. All for a single white clover flower smaller than the buttons on his coat. He pressed it haltingly to his lips, his nostrils twitching as if to pick up some hint of another undesirably bitter experience. When he finally got on with it, he only nibbled it by half.

"It doesn't taste like much," he remarked a little sadly.

"No," said V, chewing busily. "But it doesn't have to."

The meal could be called a salad by a generous onlooker. As V was no such thing, it was just a wet heap of clovers and mint. It wasn't anything special, indeed, but the clovers were fresh, and the mint was cool, and after two weeks of fish and two days without any food at all, the tastes and textures were more than enough for V to eat every bite.

9S, who watched with a shy but sunny smile, had gone through a lot of effort, after all.

He washed it all down with a bitter and lukewarm but thoughtfully made cup of dandelion tea.


	26. Reflection

Faintly dandelion scented steam rose from the cauldron's contents, which rippled with gently rolling bubbles. V hissed in a breath between his teeth. The wet fabric on the back of his neck stung at first touch but followed with blooming heat. His many aches and tensions dulled, finally finding relief he could not otherwise provide. He rolled and stretched his shoulders and craned his neck back to press the heat deeper into his bones.

Not quite a hot bath, but close enough.

"You sure I can't help?" said 9S, from somewhere behind him. "With the archive, I mean."

"It would make the task go more quickly," V admitted. "But I fear even I don't know precisely what I hope to find."

"What kind of things did you end up picking when you went through the index?"

"Anything related to the giant, the dragon, and your 'demonic element'—maso." With care to spare his hands, he dipped the cooling white cloth back into the scalding water, twisted away the excess, and pressed it lower down his back. "There were more subjects that caught my eye, but my rationale could be fleeting. The hunch of a moment is hard to explain, and ill-suited to make a rule of."

A faint hum answered, then a shuffle. "Hey, your back is kind of reddish-yellow at the bottom."

V's grip on the resistance shirt tightened, sending a pattering of droplets to the concrete. "I could swear we had discussed the subject of privacy before."

"You're wearing pants!"

"That isn't the point." He glared over his shoulder at the support pillar that 9S had been politely standing behind. "My desire for privacy isn't based on my state of dress."

"Fine, fine, sorry." He retracted back around the corner, out of sight. "…Does it hurt?"

It was hard to remain frustrated when he asked so tenderly. "It's just from laying down for too long on solid stone. It will heal. What of you?"

"Me? I'm fine, why?"

"From the moment I woke, it was clear that you have been ignoring your maintenance."

9S remained hidden behind the pillar, but the pout on his face was easily pictured by his petulant mumble. "I've been busy taking care of you…"

Leaving the half-wrung shirt draped over the lip of the cauldron, V stood. He rounded the pillar and planted the handle of his cane under 9S' chin to ensure his gaze didn't wander. "It was you who gave your word you would take better care of yourself. Should your body fail, I am no more capable of repairing you than you were me. Do you not understand that? I would have no choice but to seek aid from other androids in order to fix you."

"You'd actually go that far to repair me?"

V's head dropped into a tilt. He had hoped to instill the seriousness of the problem into 9S—he didn't know anything about androids or the first thing about how their bodies could fail or be repaired. Instead, he was met with a face he couldn't read and body language that looked timid according to their size difference, but not exactly intimidated.

He imagined they were both sharing the same incredulous expression, albeit for different reasons.

9S suddenly cleared his throat and made a dozen half-formed jerky motions. "You're right, it's best it doesn't come to that. Since you're doing okay, I'll just—leave and—go get maintained at the camp! I'll have Pod 153, so if you need me just—just tell Pod 042!"

He squeezed out from between V and the pillar with a wiggling motion not unlike a worm and was out of the nearest street-facing window before V could even think of something to say.

_Aww, you made a little friend, Shakespeare._

Without granting Griffon a response, V reached behind his back and touched his cane to the sensitive spots along the base of his spine. They were tender still, but nowhere near as bad as when he had discovered them.

Most of the previous day was spent furiously completing the last of his index search whether 9S was present or not. Now he was in between tasks, well-fed, and invigorated by almost having a hot bath. It was the first time since waking that he was truly alone with his unoccupied thoughts. A space filled no sooner than he realized its emptiness.

Before the cauldron, he slowly ran the blissfully hot water through his hair, but the joy of it was lost in the distracted biting of his lip. His healing seemed quick, but he couldn't truly say. Before, he had been as much a construct of magic as a thing of flesh and blood. An effigy of the human he might have been had his demon blood never awakened. He had existed on remnants of that blood and its energies. When they waned with the passing weeks, his form had crumbled like stone. The reverse case seemed to be so in this place. Whether it was the maso feeding him or that he had already technically reunited with himself, he was less a construct and more flesh and blood.

More complete than a mere shadow, too much a shade of Vergil to be whole, too demonic to be human, and too human to be a demon…

What exactly was he now?

Such concerns had no answer or end, so he wrung them from his mind as impersonally as he wrung the water from his hair. He was V. Someone who had once been Vergil, and who might be again. To return could very well mean his sublimation back into the whole. No matter. He had done it once. He would do it again if it got him back to the home in his mind's eye.

That didn't mean he couldn't be comfortable while he worked on that, of course.

"Pod?" A friendly whir answered him. "I noted your index had a very large section on preserved literature."

"AFFIRMATIVE. POD ARCHIVES CONTAIN APPROXIMATELY 97,000 HUMAN TEXTS ON A VARIETY OF DISCIPLINES."

"Including poetry." In truth, he preferred the feeling of a physical book, but if it came to it, he didn't intend to be choosy. "What purpose does that serve for you?"

"REPORT: ARCHIVE IS PART OF COMPLIANCE WITH THE HUMAN HERITAGE RESTORATION AND RECLAMATION BRANCH OF THE ARMY OF HUMANITY. IT ALSO ALLOWS PODS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT REGARDING THE USEFULNESS OF ANY HUMAN RELICS ENCOUNTERED."

He pushed his hair back out of his face and squinted up at the pod. "Until the recent report came out, androids must have believed in humans enough to preserve their remains."

"AFFIRMATIVE. IT ALSO SERVES TO RECORD THE NATURE OF STRUCTURES BEFORE MACHINE REBUILDING EFFORTS."

"Machines rebuild things other than themselves…?"

"MACHINE LIFEFORMS ARE KNOWN TO RECREATE AREAS DESTROYED IN MAJOR MISSIONS. A SIGNIFICANT PORTION OF THIS ZONE WAS REBUILT BY MACHINES. HYPOTHESIS: THIS MAY BE RELATED TO INFORMATION ABOUT HUMANITY ENTERING THEIR NETWORK, OR THEY MAY HAVE MIMICKED ANDROID EFFORTS TO REPAIR AND MAINTAIN HIGH-PRIORITY LEGACY STRUCTURES DAMAGED DURING SKIRMISHES."

A low, humorless laugh escaped V. "This earth is so akin to a garden, yet it is filled with lost children fighting over the legacy of beings they never even knew."

The bitterness of his own words struck him when Pod did not answer. V sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. Perhaps it was his refreshed and vivid memory that had him drawing unpleasant comparisons. He shook the resistance shirt out and left it on the ground to dry.

"Come," he said, rising to his feet. "Fresh air would serve me well."

* * *

Machine reconstruction efforts made sense of something that had bothered V. Unable to identify the source of his unease, he had alternated between shrugging it off or assuming it was the knowledge that he was the only human on the planet.

It was the design of some of the less damaged buildings. They looked like children's drawings of what a building should look like: concrete rectangles of varying dimensions and orientations with dark, square holes at regular intervals. Only the oldest, most unstable structures look like they weren't built based on a vague idea of what a building should look like. To traverse the safer sections of the ruins where reconstruction had occurred was to walk amongst imitations that lacked the fine details that allowed any sense of reality.

Even the skyscraper he camped in was just glorified stack of empty floors, and suddenly it made sense why. They weren't made with any purpose, so their interiors had no doors, no separating walls, and no purely aesthetic choices. They were just blank spaces with stairwells connecting one identically barren floor to the next.

The blank uniformity set his teeth on edge now that he saw it for what it was. When he finally came to an older building, with its boarded-up windows in irregular places and a few shreds of what must have once been carpet inside, he couldn't help but sigh. He leaned in the shade. This world could be beautiful, but the ruins had lost some of their lonesome charm and now felt to him like a mockery.

Before he could get too comfortable, his tattoos squirmed. "You climbed the Qliphoth and some knock off architecture is what gets under your skin?" said Griffon, his leering eyes aglow with mirth. "You sure you shouldn't be back in bed letting your nurse take care of you?"

V smirked and plucked a bit of grass from the edge of his coat. "I could tell him I had a taste for poultry."

"Yeah, and he'd cook me on the spot." He perched carefully on a listing but sturdy wall. "You should start asking for weirder and weirder shit, see how much of it he actually brings you."

"I already requested salt and couldn't get that."

"Oh, you got it alright," Griffon sniggered. "Just not from the kid and a lot more than you wanted."

V grimaced and brushed at his forearms. His eyes meandered over the differences between the truly ancient buildings and the reconstructed ones. It was hard to imagine 9S or any of the equally slender female YoRHa models doing construction, but so far all he had seen of other androids were Anthurium and occasionally another female model with him at the forest outpost.

Griffon, ever in tune with his desires, squawked out the most unsophisticated possible version of the question forming in V's mind. "Yo soda can, what's the deal with the normal droids?"

"THE DEAL?"

"Yeah, they yesterday's news or wh—HUGKH!"

V retracted his cane from the feathers pillowing Griffon's throat. "What my support unit means to ask is the difference between YoRHa and other androids."

"SUBJECT IS COVERED IN THE YORHA FILES PROVIDED TO SUBJECT V PREVIOUSLY. DO YOU REQUIRE A SUMMARY?"

"No." His brows drew together, the question still formulating. There was no succinct way to ask for it. "Tell me how non-YoRHa androids operate and organize."

"AFFIRMATIVE. ARMY OF HUMANITY ANDROIDS ARE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE UNITS RUN ON FUSION REACTORS ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED THROUGH MASO RESEARCH. THE MAJORITY OPERATE FROM ONE OF NINE ORBITAL MILITARY BASES.

EARTH-BOUND UNITS OCCUPY STRATEGIC LOCATIONS ON PERMANENT DEPLOYMENT FOR RESOURCE GATHERING OR PRESERVATION PURPOSES. RESISTANCE CAMPS ARE OFTEN LEFTOVER ANDROIDS FROM PREVIOUS DESCENT MISSIONS. MOST ARE OBSOLETE MODELS WHO CONTINUE TO FIGHT AGAINST MACHINES INDEPENDENT OF OFFICIAL COMMANDS. INTERFACE WITH OTHER ANDROIDS ON THEIR PART IS LARGELY FOR SUPPLY TRADE."

He gazed back across the ruins toward the resistance camp. "Are they all as human as 9S?"

"NEGATIVE. ANDROIDS ARE NOT HUMAN."

"Quacks like a fuckin' duck if you ask me," said Griffon. "Get with the program soda can, V knows they're made of metal, he's asking if they all act human."

"ALL ANDROIDS HAVE MEMORIES OF HUMAN LIFE IMPLANTED PRIOR TO ACTIVATION IN ADDITION TO AI WHICH INFORMS PERSONALITY. IN THE MOST RECENT GENERATION OF YORHA ANDROIDS, THIS SYSTEM WAS COMPRESSED INTO MORE SOPHISTICATED PERSONALITY DATA TO ENSURE ALL DEFAULT PERSONALITY TYPES PRODUCED MODELS THAT BEHAVED IDENTICALLY AT ACTIVATION."

V drove his hand through his still-damp hair. He was aware of his jaw growing as tight as the grip on his cane, and the pulse of his heart racing in his ears. 'Why' sprung to mind as the obvious question, but he shot a glare at Griffon, silently warning him that any breach of silence would cost him more than a playful jab. 'Why' was small and he was far, far beyond it.

"Androids were never going to receive black boxes," he said, his voice a rumble with the same timbre as a volcano considering an awakening after a long sleep. "YoRHa was only for combat data and that foolish lie about humanity."

"AFFIRMATIVE. STANDARD AI WOULD REMAIN THE DEFAULT DESIGN."

"What does the black box actually do that AI could not?"

"THE BLACK BOX CONTAINS THE YORHA UNIT'S CONSCIOUSNESS DATA. THROUGH UPLOAD OF DATA TO THE BUNKER, MEMORIES COULD BE TRANSFERRED TO A NEW BODY WITH LIMITED BREAK IN FLOW OF CONSCIOUSNESS. THIS IS NOT POSSIBLE WITH STANDARD AI DUE TO COMPLEXITY OF NEURAL NETWORK."

"How funny that an AI considered such their plans too cruel for other AI, but not to the convenient beings they powered with their enemies' hearts." The flow of blood rushing through his ears and heating his chest bordered on pyroclastic, and his laughter was as deep and black as the smoke of an all-consuming fire. "The androids should be proud. Such pointless prejudice is very human indeed."

"QUERY: WHAT IS THE REASON FOR SUBJECT V'S ANGER?"

Dozens of reasons came to mind, but none were sharper than the lingering image of 9S crying over V's body. V had thought him so incongruously made ever since they met. An overgrown devil breaker in the shape of a person, capable of thought and so much more. A soldier built in the image of a boy who smiled and laughed and sulked; whose eyes sometimes went so dull and tired V thought he might shut down on the spot.

9S wasn't human, but he was still just a child whose whole world had unraveled from under his feet, mourning it seemingly without even understanding that what pained him at times was grief. He had lost 2B, and probably so much more that he wouldn't yet discuss.

Unlike V, 9S had been _designed_ powerless.

His abandonment by his makers was not the misunderstanding of a frightened child but the end goal of his creation. He understood, more than he wanted to, why 9S looked the way he did when they met. Unstable. _Feral._ Ready to die if it got him any respite from not only the designs of his creators but being tormented by his enemy.

To see a worse version of his own life crafted so intentionally and so needlessly burned in V's gut more than any salt.

Humming interrupted the black stream of his thoughts.

His eyes flicked to Griffon. He held out his cane to stay him and craned his body to find the source.

In a pool of light beside the leaning remains of a building, a female android stood before a sad and scraggly rose bush. She was easily the largest android he had seen yet. Over six feet, though not quite up to his height, with pale brown skin and loose black hair under a headdress he didn't recognize. And she wasn't humming. She was…singing.

Serene notes filled the distance between them and bounced off the skeletal remains of the structures around them. For a fleeting moment, V was held rapt. It was the first song he had heard in this world—sung by an android. One wearing the telltale worn fatigues of the resistance androids, though the deep green and richly gold-embroidered cloak covering her back suggested she might be of some importance.

A pressingly large gun hung over her shoulder.

He gestured to Griffon, putting a finger to his lips, and ducked inside the unblocked hole of a nearby window opening. The humming cut off instantly, replaced by the click of the gun's safety being removed. Her hearing was certainly not human. Her footsteps crept in, practiced and near-silent.

V readied his cane. Shadow's tattoos twitched as she prepared to make the first rush. Griffon could follow up. Hopefully, the electricity worked as well on androids as it did on machines.

Before any of them could make a move, the pod drifted out.

"RESISTANCE LEADER ANEMONE CONFIRMED," he said casually. "GOOD EVENING, ANEMONE."

"A pod…?" she said, with a lilt of recognition. "What are you doing out here alone?"

"THIS POD IS ON A SURVEYING TASK FOR YORHA UNIT 9S."

Her boots appeared just around the corner from where V crouched. Her gun shifted, but V didn't hear her click the safety back into place. "I didn't think you could leave your assigned units."

"AFFIRMATIVE. YORHA UNIT A2 LACKED THE AUTHORITY AND INTERFACE TO TRANSFER POD OWNERSHIP. TECHNICALLY, THIS POD IS STILL REGISTERED TO HER IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE FINAL ORDER OF YORHA UNIT 2B."

A soft laugh answered, as did the rustle of the gun being safely settled back over Anemone's shoulder. "I see. They didn't have anything like you back then… Would've been useful."

"QUERY: WHY IS ANEMONE ALONE SO FAR FROM THE RESISTANCE CAMP?"

"Mmm…" Her feet shifted slightly toward the rosebush. "Just greeting an old friend."

"CAN A FLOWER BE CONSIDERED A FRIEND?"

"For me, yes. Maybe even something more important than that." She shuffled closer to where the pod must have been floating, just out of V's line of sight. A slightly metallic rasping tickled his ear—the sound he associated with his gloves brushing the pod's surface.

"Up in that tower…" said Anemone. "Was A2 able to find peace?"

"…UNKNOWN. HOWEVER, THIS POD BELIEVES SO."

She laughed again—a worldly and welcoming sound. "I'm glad. …You and 9S be careful out here."

Her boot steps moved in the other direction, pausing briefly beside the rosebush before continuing back into the ruins.

Pod drifted back down to the open window and clicked his claws in a somehow satisfied way. "CONFRONTATION AVERTED."

V smirked, and re-emerged from his impromptu hiding spot. "I suppose so."

Griffon ruffled his feathers and flew to the rose bush to peek in the direction Anemone had gone. "Would certainly be more interesting around here if scanner boy was built like that."

V's shoulders sagged and he stared with pinched and painful eyes after his familiar. It may have been his exposure to Nico, but he had a weakness for women who could probably kill him. Android women included, it seemed.

"She's the resistance leader then," he said, opting to ignore Griffon.

"AFFIRMATIVE. WOULD SUBJECT V LIKE ANEMONE'S UNIT DATA?"

He recalled seeing something about that in the index. "Did I include any unit data in my pass through?"

"NEGATIVE."

"Add it. All of it."


	27. Little Boy Lost

"The_ mattress_?"

Anemone's confusion made 9S wince. He'd worried about getting a response like that. "I know it's a weird ask."

Her eyebrows drew closed and she uncrossed her arms to drop her hands to her hips. "Whatever you've been doing out there isn't hurting any of my people, so it's none of my business, but you could just stay here in the camp."

"Thanks..." He hoped she knew he meant it. "But I don't belong here."

"I see." She frowned, and her gaze momentarily turned inward. "You must already know I can't just let you walk out of here with it. Are you willing to work for it?"

9S gave a small, familiar smile. "Same old chores, huh? What do you need?"

"We're trying to re-establish the desert outpost while the city machines remain non-hostile. Our numbers are low and so are our supplies, so every extra hand helps." She bobbed her chin up over his shoulder toward a slim android clad in dark green. "That's Pine. She's leading the effort. Stick with her and get the job done and the mattress is yours."

Pine proved to be the assistant intelligence officer to Jackass, mercifully devoid of any of the latter's more coarse habits. He didn't recall having met her personally before, and if she had seen him before, she didn't make a conversation point out of it. Everything about her, from the way she carried herself to the way she carried her tools, was measured and efficient.

21O would probably have liked her.

"Put your seatbelt on."

"Huh?"

She slid into the driver's seat of the truck and started the engine. "Gonna need you to pay more attention. This isn't like those fancy flight suits y'all used to ride around. It's primitive and the suspension is shot from these roads." She pulled a black strap conscientiously over her one shoulder down to the opposite hip and clicked it into place.

"**Seatbelt**," she repeated.

She took off without waiting. His body jerked back in the seat and he had to fight the nauseating bob and bounce of the truck to get his seatbelt on. The moment it clicked, he gripped his corner of the vehicle and stared in horror between her and the road. She drove as meticulously as she did everything else, but it felt like he could be tossed out onto the street any minute.

"Is the suspension being busted this bad?!"

The truck lurched to a stop. She twisted around and peered through the back window as they reversed. "Nah, I'm just not a very good driver."

He stared, but her task-focused expression made it impossible to tell if she was joking. Soon enough they were beyond the worst of the roads and 9S could cautiously enjoy Pine's sensible cruise speed.

"You paying attention?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Her mouth twisted. "Don't do that. Pine is fine. Listen, watch your back today."

"Do you expect enemy hostility?"

"No. It's dead out there. Worst we've seen is an occasional wave of those screaming bastards that run up on you and explode while you're still trying to figure out what the hell is happening. What you're gonna want to watch is the other androids."

Caught up in the cloud of caring for V, 9S hadn't really considered he might encounter aggression toward him during this errand. But he couldn't say he was surprised. "Oh."

"Don't make that face." She sped up. "Anemone wouldn't throw you to the wolves. No one is expendable to her. But I'm warning you that there's a lot of different opinions about YoRHa right now and they're not all sweet on you."

"What about you?"

"I'm not gonna step in to save your ass if that's what you mean. You brought down the tower, defend yourself. What am I gonna do, write you up?"

"No I—I mean your opinion."

Pine shrugged and turned a little too quickly onto the empty, mercifully intact road that led from the southwest corner of the city all the way north to the desert. The engine's putting sputter rose to a guttural growl. Her eyes were hard, and she might not have realized she was no longer driving at a sober speed.

"Don't know what I think. Don't know that I care about the fine details of your make. Bottom line is you are a one-of-a-kind model now. You may be instrumental in finding the people who came up with YoRHa."

Killing his makers wasn't a novel thought. That daydream had slithered thought him a few times, not in the throes of the omni-directional hatred that had once consumed him, but with the same cold and specifically aggrieved way Pine talked about about it. Among the stars in the orbital bases that housed android forces, there had to be Command-types who knew. Somewhere up there were androids who spent their time thinking up ways to create newer, better androids, and they had spent almost a decade waiting for Project YoRHa to return results. He imagined looking into the eyes of the people who thought him up. Demanding answers, making his displeasure known, maybe even hearing their rationale before ending their lives.

For Pine and Jackass, it was more than a passing fantasy.

In his chest, the pulse of his black box slowed to a muffled creep. What they intended was another bleak war waged by garbage just as derelict as he was, for a revenge that wouldn't change anything. And what else was there for them to do? After so many of their friends' lives had gone to waste, this was all they had. This was their Tower and YoRHa's creators were the network they hoped to kill at the top. It was where they would lose what was left of their faith and quite possibly their minds, and all he hoped was that something worthwhile awaited them once they brought it all crumbling down.

Maybe killing the machines for the rest of their lives would be enough. They weren't YoRHa. There was nothing for them to think about if they did. No unsettling similarities. No machine's agonized memories rattling around inside of them.

9S turned his gaze out the window and tried to keep his mind and body steady against the exhausting weight of it all. They were only just pulling up toward the sand-scoured remains of skyscrapers that landmarked the previous desert outpost, and he already wanted to leap out of the truck and run back to where V was.

He wouldn't. The whole point of all of this was the bruise on V's back. If he got sick again, this time 9S would ensure he had somewhere to rest that wouldn't hurt his body. And more than his comfort or his well-being, 9S found though Pine's words that he had a growing well of gratitude for V that he probably couldn't have expressed in words.

The mattress would do as a thank you.

They slowed to a stop just ahead of a group of maybe a dozen other androids. A quick, meaningful flick of the eyes from Pine reminded him of her warning. He nodded grimly and stepped out of the truck.

A ripple went through the group immediately. Eyes and heads picking up, snapping away from Pine to his smaller, more conspicuous black-clad shape.

He didn't know any of them. The only one he faintly recognized was a female unit that was occasionally at Anthurium's outpost.

"If you're gonna gawk, get lost!" Pine snapped. "If you're here to work, line up. I don't wanna be out here all day."

Half the group hopped into line, a quarter more slunk into place, and one made a big show of marching cross-armed into position. Two remained locked onto 9S. Both were female models, one taller with short hair and goggles, and one shorter with brown hair and the sort of grayish blue eyes he was accustomed to seeing on YoRHa models.

_Guess those are the ones I'll have to watch today,_ he thought wearily.

The shorter one marched toward him. He clenched his fists and silently opened the lock-on channel of the FFCS. Someone yelped a warning, but neither of them heeded it.

Up close, her eyes were as gray as ash. There was a slight imperfection in each one—a sliver of reflective material that previously caught the color of the unclouded desert sky and now reflected the sand. It gave her that same animal look that he recalled from the androids in the coliseum. But when she grabbed him by his collar, he could feel the restraint in her shaking forearms.

"Did you know?" she demanded between bared teeth. "Did you know any of it?"

"...After the Bunker fell." He quietly closed the channel to his FFCS. "That's when I found out. Before that…"

The leather of his coat creaked in her fists, and her eyes and teeth clenched along. Like she was imploding—drawn into a black hole that had opened up somewhere inside her.

From the line-up of their peers, a soft-eyed female model leaned out. "Gladiolus… Put him down."

9S dropped unceremoniously into the dust. Above him, Gladiolus cursed and marched into her. She still looked mad at the entire world, but for now she had decided not to take it out on him.

Pine rolled her eyes "Anybody else have any outbursts they wanna get out of the way? Aconite?" The taller female model who had lingered back shrugged and took her time meandering into place. Pine looked down at 9S. "You waiting for something? Get up, let's get to work."

* * *

**6:57 PM**

The task of clearing the rubble is parsed into a neat and well-planned series of tasks: Investigate the intended site for volatile materials, clear the smaller towerfall, blast the larger towerfall, clear the remainder, conduct salvage if possible, final clear, and re-establishment of the camp.

It is no surprise to 9S that he's on point for the first job. Two resistance members are paired with him for the task: One male model called Alstroemeria, who insisted 9S call him Emery, and another called Wormwood.

His abilities as a scanner and the insights of Pod 153 end up doing most of the front work. He identifies evidence of unexploded munitions, and evidence of a lye spill. The substance is not to be to be taken lightly even by the most advanced android, but it represents a special problem for resistance members. The protective silicone casing has given way in places for many of them. With galvanization exceptionally common among androids assigned to ocean-bordering zones, they are at risk of not only having their components corroded, but of creating dangerous emissions of hydrogen gas.

Clean-up is not his job. With his contributions exhausted, he stands by while the other two work on extraction.

Emery talks almost the entire time. He is massive and loud and what 9S imagines a friendly boar would be like if it could talk. He doesn't seem to bear any ill will at all toward YoRHa, and a substantial part of his chatter is reassuring 9S that he was as much as android as any of them. Such a noisy personality is jarring and a little tiring for 9S, but he makes the effort to accept the vast stores of the older model's energy.

"They just raised all this silicone up out of the ground like we're not starving for the stuff," Emery laments. "Machines never fail to surprise me. Me and my brother, you know, we've been down here around since the 11th Descent mission and every day it feels like we learn something new."

"Is that why you're so…" 9S raises his hand up high, somehow embarrassed to acknowledge the difference in their size. It shouldn't have mattered, especially since 9S was the more advanced model, but being called a child by V has left its mark on him. "I read that back they there was a lot of diversity in android body types due to experiment—ah!"

Wormwood brushes between them and holds up a chalkboard with a mission-related question on it.

"Yeah, that'd be good," Emery answers, crossing his arms. "You shouldn't be so rude though."

Wormwood silently returns to work. There is a dispassion to the set of his thin face and the way he moves that seems less like rudeness, and more like he doesn't notice anyone is on the job but him and Emery.

**9:09 PM**

9S is left off the physical portion of clearing the smaller tower fall. Hard physical labor, while not entirely impossible, isn't what he was designed for. Pine doesn't leave him much downtime but doesn't give him jobs that might damage his primary functionality. Knowing what she thinks of him, he doesn't mistake this for compassion.

His new team is composed of Aster, the soft-eyed one who had called out to Gladioulus, and an ancient ranged-attack model named Bouvardia. Their task is to transport the rubble into the desert—not far enough into the dunes to be a terrible idea, but far enough that they swapped specialty wheels onto the truck. He and Bouvardia act as escort while Aster drives. She pays them little mind. Her attention to the road is as meticulous as Pine's, and she gives the impression she is there to do the job and not waste energy on anything else.

Because the machines are inactive, the job is boring. He spends his time stealing looks at Bouvardia, who is a relic old enough to have visible silicone paneling on his face. A few pairs of black bands circle his joints, likely to keep the elements out of places that had long since become so obsolete that they couldn't be repaired properly.

"Em give you any trouble?" he asks with a voice as rough as the truck engine between them.

The name stalls in 9S mind for a moment before he understands the even shorter nickname for Alstroemeria. "You're his brother?"

Bouvardia gives a dim smile, like he's heard the question beneath what 9S actually asked a hundred times.

He and Emery share no resemblance because they are not a paired model type. Bouvardia had arrived during the 8th Descent, and found Emery almost broken in the middle of the 11th. Both had artificial memories of having siblings. They took care of each other and any android they found that shared that trait.

It sounds to 9S like they had a sizable family once. Now it was just the two of them

"It's an old model's job to take care of models like you." He hesitates, as if realizing how that must sound. "New models, I mean. You get wrapped up in your heads a lot."

9S feels a sort of déjà vu. Bouvardia is much clumsier about it, but he has some of what he often senses in Anthurium and has come to notice in many older models.

Do they know something about living that he doesn't, he wonders. Is it only age that makes them so different?

**10:00 PM**

9S is relegated to machinery check while more familiar androids set charges to destroy the larger debris. His partners in this are a brusque, hard-faced android called Statice, and a baby-faced unit barely any larger than he was by the name Freesia.

Statice is cold. There is no writing it off or ignoring it. But 9S thinks this surly demeanor might be natural personality rather than specific animosity at YoRHa. He doesn't respond to Freesia's not-so-subtle attempts to direct the conversation to just what the nature of a YoRHa unit is. After a handful of awkward dodges of the subject from 9S, Statice buries his answer in the subject with the finality of a maul striking a porcelain cup.

"If he's a machine, those Red Girls threw him away. If he's an android, the Army of Humanity built him like that. As long as he kills machines, I don't care and neither should you."

It is a refreshingly practical position—one that doesn't leave 9S the center of attention so much as Pine's.

Freesia struggles to let the topic go. She insists on being friendly and accommodating with such aggressive, syrupy excess that even 9S is repulsed. Finally, she utters words that remind 9S he absolutely still has a hole in his being where a mutinous, feverish violence lurks.

"I think you must just be a very nice machine, just like Pascal!"

Across the dusty road, the tall, goggled android Pine had called Aconite snorted and leered over at him with a grin that even Griffon couldn't have matched.

He cannot remember what follows those words. There was a clenching of his jaw—so hard he had imagined a tooth snapping out of his mouth and shooting right through her skull. Things go dark as he imagines her shocked, dying face. The next thing he knows, Pod is saying something about a system restart due to dangerous black box temperatures. The few seconds of disorientation are enough for Freesia to have wandered away, and he quietly stuffs that part of himself back inside the pit it nearly erupted from.

**10:37 PM**

They clear the area for blasting. There are no pairs; it is up to 9S to find a safe spot to withdraw to. Instinctively, he follows the android he recognized from Anthurium's outpost. Her name is Balm. She greets him nicely enough but isn't in a hurry to say much to him. He passes her by to find his own spot when she settles down with her back to the curve of the cliff face.

The charges detonate. Under the body-shaking thunder of it, a shriek reaches his aural system too late for him to react. The air rains white rubble and sand and a woman he can barely see snatches him by his neck. She yanks him upright with vicious strength. Like a rabbit being swung in the jaws of a wolf, his overtaxed senses struggle to keep up. Profanities he cannot understand exit her in frothing barks, reporting as sharply as gun fire.

"Why did you have to go digging around where you weren't wanted?!" Oh. "Did it feel good?! Stroke your fucking scanner ego?!" Oh god,_ please_."You took _**everything **_from us! You robbed us! What good did the truth do for any of us in a stupid fucking world like this?!"

She rams him against the cliffs, and the impact is an echoing rattle that brings down more grit. "You trash—you _**failure**_—all you had to do was **DIE**!"

"_Cypress_."

Balm appears in the mostly settled dust, and Cypress releases him.

9S sees finally that Cypress' eyes are brown, but blackened by her hatred of him. Her face is caked with dust and she would seem tanned if not for the chaotic tributaries of tears cutting through the grime and revealing pale skin beneath.

"You're no better than those twins," she spits, kicking the cliff beside his head. "You should have been buried under the tower with them."

She storms off. 9S remains on the ground shivering, his body as rattled as his mind. Balm offers him a gentle hand and help him to his feet.

If she spoke at all, 9S did not hear her.

**10:58 PM**

9S doesn't mention anything, even when Pine stares at him.

**11:03 PM**

Emery is prying in his well-meaning way.

9S remains silent. He is afraid of what he will say if he allows himself to speak.

Bouvardia calls his brother away, and 9S shoots him a painfully thankful look, not remembering that his blindfold prevents that kind of silent communication.

**11:46 PM**

"Rusty."

Someone snickers. It's a term heard often in the android coliseum, one with less dignity than being called by a dog's name.

9S stares unemotionally at his work, without bothering to look for the source. He already knows it's Aconite, who had steadfastly refused to let Freesia's innocent but intensely demeaning comment fly.

He hears someone swat Aconite, but the both laugh. That would be Lobelia, then. It isn't the first of his spiteful whispers. Whenever 9S is in earshot, he oozes out from somewhere and speaks casual malice to the nearest android. With Aconite, he finds an open ear.

"He came to the coliseum a week or two ago," he gossips. "He looked nervous. I think he was sympathetic to his kin."

"Are you sure it was sympathy?" Aconite asks, just loud enough to be heard. "Machines don't feel things, it's just imitation, isn't it?"

"The ones that look like androids are better at it. Remember the one who berserked the whole network? YoRHa was probably like that. Machines wearing an android's skin."

_I didn't ask for this! I DIDN'T ASK TO BE MADE!_

The magnitude of the thought is enough to crowd his other senses out, but it never comes close to his lips. He wishes silently that V didn't exist, so he could attack them right then and there and hopefully be destroyed. Guilt immediately floods from his core programming.

Someone had to protect V. It couldn't be androids like them. They weren't worthy. They didn't deserve him.

9S doesn't believe he deserves V either.

**2:54 AM**

The job is nearly over. 9S is numb. He has been numb for hours.

He sits limp in the passenger seat beside Aster. Bouvardia and Statice trot just ahead of them. The larger debris has taken many trips and demanded deeper journeys into the desert. Something about the material having a strange property of sucking heat from the atmosphere, and the possibility of slowing the planet's desertification.

It sounds interesting, but 9S is simply not there.

"Hey."

It is the first word Aster has spoken to him all night. Fresh tension tries to wind up in him but finds his nerves flaccid and unwilling. He closes his eyes and prays this will be quick.

The trucks slows just enough for him to notice, and in the silence between the sputters of the engine he hears a whisper.

"Thank you."

The disbelief is enough to turn his head.

"Don't stare," she says, barely audible as the engine picks back up. "I don't want them to know I'm talking to you." Her slim fingers fidget. "But really, thank you."

His tone comes out sluggish and warbling. "For what?"

Androids were not built to blush, but she didn't need to. Everything he needed to know exists in the way her teeth nibble just inside her lip and the hesitant removal of one hand from the wheel to adjust her cloak.

"Gladiolus was really devoted to humans. Always fighting too hard, always—." She stops herself, and glances out at Statice and Bouvardia. "Anyway, I'm grateful to you for discovering they were all dead."

A soft smile that isn't at all for him lights her brown cheeks. "Maybe now we can finally just go somewhere quiet and be together. Just the two of us until we break down..."

9S stares at her despite her earlier words. He realizes at some point that he is shaking again. Silently laughing. He doesn't know why. What he does know, with sudden, breathless dread, is that he cannot bear to be in the truck with Aster for one more moment. He blurts something and claws his way out of the window, throwing himself into the sand. The truck screeches to a stop, but he is gone before he hears anyone call after him.

He doesn't know where he is going, but he runs there. Pod's mechanical voice calls out in urgent tones behind him, but something must be damaged again because he cannot understand her. His eyes are wide behind his visor, but the world is static and confusion and nothing all at once. There are things in his vision, passing him by at blurry speeds, but they are a shapeless noise between his sensors and processors; unrecognizable and unfamiliar.

**3:09 AM**

All that exists are his thumping steps carrying him to a destination he doesn't know on the one pleaded thought keeping from breaking:

I want to go home. I want to go home. I want to go home.

**3:55 AM**

Above his head, a sea of lunar tears release specks of glowing pollen into the air. They resemble stars in the night sky—a sight he has not seen in over two months. It hadn't struck him as special then. Why should it, when it was natural to him? YoRHa didn't gaze at the stars. They gazed at the earth.

But now there is only 9S, and there is no Bunker to return to.

He will probably never see those stars again.

**5:02 AM**

V is sleeping.

9S places the mattress down beside him. It would do him a lot of good, he thinks, to move V onto it and see at least one good thing come out of this day, but he doesn't want to risk waking him.

In a moment partly curious and partly anxious for even the thinnest pretense of belonging, 9S lays down on it himself. A scent of mint and sweat and withered orange blossoms seeps from V. His breathing is near-silent, but 9S watches the easy contract and expand of his respiration.

For the first time in many long months, he closes his eyes and sleeps.


	28. UnComplicated

"IN 2008, THE WALL OF JERICHO IS DESTROYED AND AS A RESULT, THE EXISTENCE OF LEGION AND RED-EYE BECOME PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE. THE SAME YEAR, THE RED DRAGON'S CORPSE IS MOVED TO A LAB AT AN UNDISCLOSED LOCATION—"

"Note that," said V, twirling the dusty, empty frames of the black glasses he had all but forgotten about.

A portion of Pod's screen lit up in the exact kind of noxiously yellow neon highlight that could ruin the page of a book forever. As far as V could tell, Pod's interface was staunchly in shades of beige and brown, so he had no idea why it had chosen such a color.

"EXCERPT SAVED. CONTINUING: IN 2009, IT WAS DECIDED THAT SHINJUKU SHOULD BE DESTROYED TO STOP LEGION INFESTATION. NUCLEAR BOMBS WERE EMPLOYED IN AUGUST OF THAT YEAR. THREE MONTHS LATER, LEGION ELIMINATION IN JAPAN WAS CONFIRMED."

V paced across the roof an idle stroll while Pod droned on at his side. Having the information recited proved to be a much better tactic than trying to read it. His lack of context coupled with inevitable eye strain meant he could rarely make it through more than a few of the dense reports before he started to skip lines or worse, re-read them a dozen times without absorbing them. Though the slightly metallic touch to his otherwise pleasant voice was not the easiest thing to listen to for hours at a time, Pod 042 was not susceptible to human failings. As a bonus, V got to give some of his attention to other things.

Like how he had awakened that morning with 9S sleeping soundly beside him on a mattress.

Up close, 9S wasn't as small he seemed. Vergil had been his size when he was maybe fourteen or fifteen. Vergil had also been wiry and scarred. 9S, despite being partly composed of wires, was slender and unmarred. Not a scrape on his knees or a scratch on his face or a weird scar from an ill-advised dare to be found. V doubted there was any scar tissue even around his replaced arm. 9S likely lacked the ability to form scars, in the same way he lacked pores or wrinkles or veins.

Even when he was a crumbling, questionably human construct held together more by magic than blood, V had been a highly convincing facsimile. Between the maso's effects on him and just how uncanny an android was upon close inspection, he was might as well have been the genuine article. Humanity personified couldn't be that divorced from the real thing. 9S makers had studied the source material more closely than the machines had studied the buildings they re-constructed, but his purpose denied him perfect replication. He was an imitation in the same way the statue of David was an imitation—exquisitely and ideally crafted, but fundamentally not the real thing.

That was what he thought now, anyway. In the moment of waking, he'd sat there, half propped up on a slab of concrete, gently turning over a dozen questions in his groggy mind—where had the mattress come from; why was 9S sleeping; when had he gotten back? Lucidity, when he had finally achieved it, had not brought lofty rationalizations about the android's nature, but an instinctive reaction to just how lifelike he was.

Nero had probably looked like 9S when he was still just a boy.

"ALERT: SUBJECT V HAS REMAINED SILENT THROUGH THREE MENTIONS OF THE LOCATION OF 'DRAGON'."

V rubbed at the bridge of his nose and held up a hand to pod. "We will have to go back. The last thing I heard was the report on Legion re-surfacing in China."

"WOULD SUBJECT V LIKE TO RETURN TO VISUAL FORMAT?"

"No, I do prefer it recited. The fault for not hearing you is mine. My mind is elsewhere."

"HYPOTHESIS: SUBJECT V IS EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY CONCENTRATING DUE TO HUNGER. PROPOSAL: WAIT FOR SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON TO RETURN WITH FOOD."

V smiled faintly. Griffon was never going to let him live that request down. "It's not hunger. Personal concerns."

"UPDATED PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD MAKE USE OF THIS POD'S CONVERSATIONAL CAPABILITIES."

V grinned over the empty rims of the glasses and laughed through his nose. "Your turn of phrase never fails to amuse me. But it's…"

'Complicated' was the word that lurked just behind his teeth, but that was a coward's word. Few things in life were genuinely complicated.

His situation? Uncomplicated. He was separated from Vergil in an alternate time or dimension, and all he had to do was to eat, drink, sleep, and read thousands of hours' worth of readily accessible reports in search of a way home.

His relationship with Nero? Complicated. Finding out he was Vergil's son meant trying to figure out if, by extension, he was also V's son. To him, Nero had been a stranger who he thought was his nephew who became something like a friend. And while Vergil might be over forty, V was underdeveloped in proportion to the fore's neglect for his human feelings. He was maybe a little older than Nero at best. At the same time, he certainly remembered—with some discomfort as he both was and wasn't the one involved—the act that had brought Nero into existence.

He did wonder what things might have been like if he had known Nero existed. 'He' referring specifically to his present form. Impossibility of the scenario and his non-existent paternal feelings for the adult Nero aside, there was enough of that feeling there for him to instinctively hate the concept of Vergil raising Nero from childhood. It wasn't even because Vergil was damaged or power hungry or immature—even though he was very much all those things.

He just couldn't stomach Vergil raising Nero because he wouldn't have become Nero as V knew him. He was a good man. Better than Vergil. More human.

To look at 9S and think of what Nero might have been like as young boy was not complicated in the slightest, but that was exactly what made it so troubling to acknowledge.

"9S reminds me of someone I know," he said, more delicately that he liked. "Family."

"AND THIS CAUSES PSYCHOLOGICAL DISCOMFORT?"

"Only when I forget he is an android, which I find myself doing more and more of late. I did not think he slept."

"UNIT 9S DOES NOT REQUIRE SLEEP TO FUNCTION."

"I had noticed. It begs the question why he chose to sleep."

Pod's antennae flicked up. "UNIT 9S ACCEPTED A STRENUOUS MISSION IN ORDER TO PROCURE A MATTRESS FOR SUBJECT V. SUSPENSION OF NON-ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS WOULD PROMOTE RECOVERY."

"And how do you know that?" V asked, wiggling the end of his cane just beneath the pod's claws.

"THIS POD FREQUENTLY EXCHANGES DATA WITH POD 153."

"Hm." So that's why he had been gone so long. Maintenance took him an hour or two, but he had been gone the better part of a day. All for a mattress. "Exactly what kind of 'strenuous mission' was it?"

"THIS POD UNDERSTOOD THAT SUBJECT V DID NOT LIKE TO PRY."

V raised an eyebrow and slowly crossed his arms. "I'm not prying; I'm asking what he did that prompted him to sleep when he's never done so before. It is a question of maintaining his function."

Pod's antennae rotated, lowered, and rose again. "UNDERSTOOD. SUBJECT V'S CONCERN FOR UNIT 9S IS NOTED. PROPOSAL: SUBJECT V SHOULD DISCUSS THE SUBJECT WITH UNIT 9S."

Pod turned and clicked his alloy digits toward the trembling ladder, seemingly oblivious to V's glare. He wasn't as insufferable as Griffon, but he was growing bolder as the weeks passed.

9S trotted toward him with a half-spoken apology that died before it was done. He froze just out V's reach, his face drained of warmth. His voice was too stony to suit the boyish bounce he'd had in his step only a moment ago.

"Where did you get those?"

V lifted the glasses gingerly from his nose and peered at them from the corner of his eye. "They've been here since you found me, just under the table. You know them?"

9S lips tightened. He held out his hand, and curtly twitched his fingers for V to hand it over.

V's eyes flicked again between the android and the glasses. Although he didn't believe 9S would try to hurt him, his tension was infectious. "Your blindfold." 9S' head twitched. "You're agitated. I'd feel a lot better if I could see your eyes."

9S tore the blindfold away. His expression was as closed as a tomb save eyes that burned cold but bright. He twitched his fingers again, more insistently, and V tossed the offending item into his waiting palm.

His fingers snapped closed like a bear trap around the delicate leg of a fawn. A few shards plinked to the concrete, but most found their end when 9S flung them from the roof with force that made V's shoulders throb.

The moment they were out of sight, 9S tugged his jacket straight and smoothed his shorts with a heavy sigh. "Sorry. Bad memory."

"So I gathered." In truth he was a little impressed. It was the most straightforward emotional reaction he'd seen yet. "I must ask…Who owned those glasses?"

"Why don't you like to talk about your mother?" asked venomously.

Such innocent words, drowned in spite until they became profane. He knew 9S would ask something scathingly personal, but he hadn't expected him to go right to the only boundary V had yet drawn. It mattered surprisingly little. He wanted to know who had put that much fear into 9S far more than he wanted to preserve the distance between them.

"She was murdered by my father's enemies when I was only a child. Burned alive."

9S flinched back as though V had struck him with his cane. The pitch of his frown and the lines of his eyes oscillated rapidly from fish-mouthed surprise and then to remorse, before a grimace of awful, dawning realization that he had to answer crowded out all else.

"I—" His eyes darted up to bygone trajectory of the broken glasses and down to their splintered remains on the ground. "His…name was Adam. He was a machine that took the shape of an android. He…" His fingers twisted around themselves as 9S wrestled with whatever experiences haunted him behind his inward-turned eyes. "I don't want to talk about it, V… He's dead. I didn't want to ever think about him again."

"Then don't," V said peaceably. "Your answer suffices."

"That's it? Why did you even ask!?"

V tilted his head. "Am I meant to probe further in spite of your displeasure?" He tapped his cane against the blindfold hanging from 9S' fist. "I've never seen that kind of expression on your face. I wanted to know the reason."

Something—Mistrust? Dread? —flickered in 9S' eyes, there and gone in the flap of an insect's wing before another emotion rose like a geyser.

"I'm not a **TOY**!" A blur of a fist slapped the cane away and sent it pin-wheeling across the concrete. "Don't just play with me because you feel like it! 'In spite of my displeasure', that didn't stop you even though… Even though, I—!"

V thought the words were clear enough, but 9S was clutching his body like V had stabbed him. The geyser subsided as rapidly as it had come on. No tears fell, mercifully, but he buried his face in his hands.

"Please don't look at me..." he whimpered, over and over in a small, pitiful voice.

V flexed his hand, wagging away the mild tingle where the cane had scraped his fingers. It seemed to him that every time he asked 9S to take the blindfold off, he got more than he bargained for. This was not how he'd hope the question would go. What he thought was an old scar had ruptured like a blister at what he thought was a moderate prod. 9S' chanting might have for him, or it might have been for whatever ghost of Adam he had roused, but V was responsible for it either way.

Here he'd thought he was the better of his two selves at dealing with people.

Telling himself it was no different than tightening a bandage around a wound, he reached carefully around 9S' head and tied the ends of his blindfold back in place.

"I'm sorry."

Startled from his feedback loop, 9S stumbled back, grasping his hands to his crookedly tied visor. He quickly adjusted back to his proper position and clutched at the strap over his chest. "Did you just... apologize to me?"

"I'm glad you heard me."

9S' jaw hung slack. As if remembering suddenly what had happened, he trotted away to retrieve V's cane. When he returned and V tried to take it, he found the android's grip didn't yield. "I'm sorry too. I shouldn't have asked about your mother."

V sighed wearily and tugged his cane until 9S handed it over. "Let someone else be fault for a day, 9S. The world will not run dry of remorse."

"I guess, it's just…" 9S smiled, weakly but warmly, and self-consciously rubbed at his hair. "Never mind. We're at twelve now?"

V smiled and gave a mild, good-natured roll of his eyes. "Eleven."

"Right, right… You uh, must be hungry, so I'll just—"

"Griffon's taking care of it." 9S frowned, but his shoulders relaxed by an inch or two. Griffon's smart mouth would have made the already awkward situation unbearable for them both, V imagined. "Do you need to perform maintenance today?"

"No, I think I'm alright. Why, do you need me for something?"

It really was charming just how his cheeks brightened at the prospect of being helpful. "I'd like to go bathe."

"Okay. I'll get some water for the cauldron."

"That's not what I meant."

* * *

A slight tug on his cloak prompted V to look down.

9S peered back up at him, watching his face with all the keen intensity of a mother fretting over a sick child. "Do you hear anything?"

"Just the breeze."

"You're sure?"

"Even if I hear it, I have no intention of re-visiting the source. It's best to not try the limits of one's luck."

9S released him, but as they walked the familiar paths through the forest, he remained close at V's heel, diligently inspecting his face for any signs of disturbance. V couldn't blame him, given what happened the last time they were there.

Such care, even if it was a little smothering, wasn't terrible.

They stayed further upstream than usual, away from the ravine and the castle and the church in the woods. It took a few scoffs from V before they found a good location up against a cliff face that offered minimal shade due to the high angle of the sun, in exchange for rocky pools and gently babbling falls.

There were no convenient boughs, so V contented himself with sitting among a suitably private formation of stones nestles close to the trickling falls. It had its perks. The largest stone was flat and the moss sprouting on it was warm and springy, inviting him to rest his back against it.

Griffon perched at the height of the cliff. Supposedly he was up there to keep watch, but the animals passing by to drink were their only companions. Shadow tried coaxing 9s into a game, but he didn't join her antics no matter how she pushed and pawed at him until finally she wandered away with an indignant snort to take a nap.

On the edge of V's periphery, 9S sat cross-legged on a smooth stone. His back was politely to V, and his head tilted toward the open sky. The air between them was calm, if a bit distant.

V busily wrung water from his hair. "Why did you bring back a mattress?"

9S was quiet a moment, formulating his question. "Are you any good at making clothes?"

V turned his head, squinting at 9S' back. "In part… Is that important?"

"It's autumn. I thought you might need warmer clothes, but I don't really know anything about how to make them."

Seasons, V realized. They were in a place with seasons. The temperature hadn't changed much as far as he was concerned, and in the forest it was as hot and humid as ever. If it came down to it, they could probably winter over in the desert, but he didn't want to think too much about what that was going to entail.

"The mattress was for your back," 9S answered. "I think concrete is pretty uncomfortable too, but it never occurred to me it could actually hurt you."

"What did you have to do for it?"

"Nothing special. Help restore the desert outpost."

V rolled over, laying his stomach flat against the stone. "Do you trust Anemone?"

9S turned, as V suspected he would. His mouth opened, but he didn't let himself get carried away by the knee-jerk question that must have crossed his mind. "Do you have any other family? Just mother, father, brother?"

"A son." V smirked halfheartedly at himself and rested a hand on his chin. "But it's complicated."

"It's like that with me and Anemone too. I trust her. I just…don't necessarily trust the other resistance members." He shrugged in a somehow lonesome way. "She can't control what they think about me."

"And what do they think about you?"

"Nothing I care to repeat," 9S said after a brief pause. He rose from his chosen seat, only to immediately trips and falls face first into the water like a steel brick.

V didn't know whether he should be alarmed or not. The water was even shallower here than in their usual spot.

"9S?" he called, to no response. "9S!"

"I'm okay! Just…!" A wet, leathery slap announced the tossing of 9S' coat. "Damn…"

V moved to the very edge of the stones and peered over them. 9S was sitting waist-deep in water, his thin chest bared. He'd opened one of three paired panels on his torso and was holding something that looked like it came out of a vacuum cleaner.

"What is that?"

"A filtration component. I must have gotten sand in my fluid exchange yesterday." He held it up to the light and pointed. "One of my joints just locked up from blockage and there's sand in this."

"So you _do_ need maintenance."

9S shook his head, and his lips twisted in annoyance. "A fluid exchange without YoRHa-specific equipment would take way too much time. It's a pain but so long as I keep this clean it'll all filter out in a day or two."

So, he could get sand in his body that could damage his ability to walk… And he had been going through a sandstorm to get water this whole time? V stared at the filter and wondered vaguely if Nico would have been able to work on something as delicate as it looked.

"Perhaps get your water from here instead."

9S looked up blankly. "What about the machine fish?"

"I'll live." V looked behind to the sloping cliff face. He leaned close to the nearest trickle and drank to his heart's content. "I don't need the purest water available, especially if getting it will damage you."

"It's fine," 9S said fumblingly. "It's really not a big deal."

"Probably not." V wiped his mouth with a dainty touch, his eyes lowering as he smiled. "But I'd like for you to think of yourself a little more."


	29. Round Robin

"RECORD OF UNKNOWN PARTICLE PHYSICIST ASSIGNED TO EARLY RESEARCH ON 'GIANT' AND DRAGON', PRE-DATING THE DESIGNATION OF 'MASO'. INVESTIGATION REPORTS FOLLOW—"

V leaned against the sturdy table, absently running his fingers through Griffon's feathers as he focused on Pod's words. The early reports were simpler, emotional responses to the situation rather than hard information. Most of them were like that. Diaries of people who had lived and died in those times made up most of what Pod was able to provide. 9S sat atop the table beside him. Occasionally, he would swing his legs together in short, rapid, perfectly parallel arcs. His fingers rubbed and tapped at the wood. Perhaps something in the dense text interested him the way the mentions of 'Tissue D' and 'Particle G' peppered among signs of the beginning of mankind's downfall interested V. Unfortunately, the reports began to disintegrate, as many did.

First into personal matters, then into mentions of sleeplessness. Buzzing noises in the ears. Ringing. Tolling.

The final report came as a long pause, followed by a strange voice that sounded neither human nor mechanical, like the buzzing scream of a cicada layered over the chitinous roar of stampeding ants.

"2006/04/22

**I.**

** CA N. **

** H E A R.**

** SO U ND S.**

…END REPORT."

A breath that V didn't know he had held seeped out with the cold tingle that had crept up his spine. Out of the corner of his eye, 9S shivered and rubbed at his arms. Good, he wasn't just hearing things again.

Griffon shuffled his wings, his triplicate eyes reproachful. "You get possessed for a second there, soda can?"

"NEGATIVE. THAT IS HOW THE DATA READS."

"That was awful," said 9S. "You're gonna give V nightmares."

He hadn't had a nightmare since he arrived. Thin sleep, but at least dreamless. However, after a few days of listening to reports, he did find himself growing tense at lighter and lighter provocations. Nothing had tried to kill him since his brush with the gods. Unpleasant an experience as it was, he was well over it and getting twitchy.

Griffon and Shadow were restless too. While they were enjoying the long days of sun-bathing and dormancy, they were still demons. They weren't accustomed to long periods of peaceful tedium.

It made a perfect excuse. "That is a good place to take a break for today."

"The whole day? You've only been at it a few hours."

"And what I have in mind will take hours more." Pushing off from the table, he draped his cane over his shoulder and held out a hand to 9S, a leg curling back to drop him into an elegant bow. "Spar with me."

9S slid tentatively down from the table. "Like combat simulation? Are you bored or something?"

"_I'm_ bored," Griffon griped.

"So it is." V shrugged like it couldn't be helped. "Familiars fight. That's the way things are."

One corner of 9S' mouth twisted, and he dropped his hands into his pockets. "You just enjoy fighting, don't you?"

"Do you not enjoy scanning?"

"Well yes, but that's different, I'm a scanner. It's built into my model type."

V's eyes dropped in thought. He could easily have said it was similarly in his design to fight, but that was more applicable to Vergil. V enjoyed not having to fight. It might have been the first time he had a choice. Just like the cane that he didn't truly need to walk, certain things he couldn't help but cling to. Thirty years of habits were not easily broken

"I may be the kind of being who is fated to fight," he said somberly.

"Fine," said 9S, though he didn't sound particularly convinced. "But I'm picking where we go."

* * *

Far beyond the eastern borders of the city limits, south of the forests but north of the coastline, V followed 9S into the wilds. The overgrown grasslands were pocked with the occasional decrepit structure, or a titanic, yawing tree that had clearly grown around a building that it had long since swallowed, leaving only a few scattered stones sprinkled in the bark like crumbs. Here too were white remnants of the tower fall. They were much sparser than the scorched craters with the remains of androids and machines and flight suits. It was a no man's land, abandoned and gone to seed.

Travelling on his own feet would have been terrible. He had no idea how 9S was maintaining his run. The city was comfortable, bordering on cool, but the empty countryside was what V expected from a planet in eternal sunlight. The saving grace was in the merciful lack of the forest kingdom's suffocating humidity. An occasional salty breeze shuffled inland through the crunchy grasses, keeping it that way.

9S slowed and came to a stop on a hill slightly flatter than those they had climbed thus far. He craned his head up to the sky. "I've ever been to this zone while I was on the ground."

V stepped out of the puddle of shadow and similarly scanned the ground. Machine presence had been sparse on their way there, and now there were none to be seen. "Perhaps I could shelter here for the winter."

"Maybe. I'll scout around a bit sometime and see what I can find." He swung his arms and dropped into a ready but not particularly enthusiastic stance. "I won't use my sword so…whenever you're ready."

V stared down his nose. "Do I strike you as that frail?"

"No, but you're still a human and I'm still an android. Do you even know how much I weigh compared to you?"

"I have killed things a dozen times bigger than you. I fail to see how your weight matters."

"It matters because I'm two thirds your size but twice your weight. It would take a long time to dent a machine bare-fisted, but if I get a hit on you, I'll break your bones."

A worthy observation. Broken bones worried V less than finding out whether he did or did not have a healing factor on his side. It would be useful to know, but he doubted he'd be able to explain healing from broken ribs without medical attention by waving it away as witch magic.

"All the more reason for you to take this seriously," he insisted. "Prepare me here and now or I may have to find out the hard way."

"Yeah… that's true. Let's have three rounds then. I'll teach you the basics." He rolled his shoulders, properly holding up his fists and bracing defensively. "When you're ready."

He turned his cane in his hand. Griffon alighted on V's arm, and the tattoos containing Shadow twitched and squirmed on his chest. Griffon took off with a raucous laugh and spat lightning. 9S waited. A bolt scorched the earth where he stood, but he darted to the side and disappeared.

Blurred afterimages flickered toward V, and he swung his cane in time to catch 9S' bizarre approach. 9S ducked, splitting out of existence again, and this time V was pulled into the field of whatever system he was activating. Outside of it, Griffon slowed nearly to a stop. Lightning on his wings, often too quick for the naked eye, crawled and twisted.

_Witch time?_

9S closed in. Shadow slid under V's feet and dragged him back, away from the attack. The field cleared, returning them to normal time. Lightning sprayed down in 9S' path, and Griffon snatched V into the sky. Shadow leaped from the long grass beneath them and exploded into black spines.

9S back dashed out of skewering range but lost no time in sprinting forward and hopping light-footedly up the mound of spikes. He bounded after them, swinging himself deftly off Pod 053 for an aerial boost. Despite making nowhere near enough vertical distance to hit them, he swung both his fists.

V glimpsed a shimmer in the air and heard a low rumble not unlike thunder. He managed to yank Griffon out of the way of one, but not the other, and was unceremoniously dropped for his efforts.

He landed in 9S' waiting arms.

"That's my win," he said with a proud smile.

V wasn't sure if the burning in his chest was embarrassment at losing or at 9S cradling him like he weighed nothing. He quickly got back on his own feet, ran his fingers through his hair, and tried to reclaim some shred of his dignity.

"Were you manipulating time?"

"I was just overclocking, but it didn't even faze you so call it what you want." 9S crossed his arms behind the back of his head. "How did you keep up with it so well? I was really impressed!"

"Minor time magic runs in the family," V explained absently, rubbing his chin with the cane. "What about that wave attack? I've never seen you use that on the machines."

"It's from a shockwave chip. I usually don't use it because it's more valuable for me to employ hacking chips." He tugged his collar down. The smooth skin at the very top of his chest receded, exposing a panel. With a click, it opened and revealed three dozen blinking nodes. "See? These are my plug-in chips."

V's eyes glazed over. "I…see. And these are YoRHa specific?"

"Nope, they're standard across all androids. I might have more active ones than a normal model, though—I made sure to invest in some extra processing. Right now, I have twelve of them active."

He pointed them out with an enthusiasm that reminded V of a child showing off interesting knick-knacks he'd collected. "This one's is for overclocking in response to close-range combat, annnd this one is for ranged. That little one on the end there is for the shockwave. I have a bigger one that's better optimized, but I swapped it for this one so it wouldn't be as painful."

Griffon fluttered down and perched on V's shoulders. "Newsflash, boy-bot, everything feels like shit when it smacks you in the ass!"

"Sorry, but if I used a full power one it would feel like you got hit with my full strength."

"His pride was more wounded than his body," said V, scratching soothingly at his familiar's feathers. "Don't mind him." He peered closer at the neat rectangle, full of smaller boxes clearly meant to be removable pieces. Most were black, but there were a few in bright splashes of color. "One of these increases your speed, doesn't it."

9S beamed. "You noticed! On the way here I spent my time customizing the best load out for fighting you. You're really slow without Griffon and Shadow. Upping my movement speed and my evasive range gave me big advantage over you."

Griffon sniggered. "He's sure got you all figured out, huh?"

"_He who has suffered you to impose on him knows you_."

"Sure, Shakespeare, now say it again without looking like you stepped in shit. Hey kid, what's the big silver one up top do?"

9S pulled back from the invasive beak poking over V's shoulder, covering his exposed chips with unexpected protectiveness. "That's my operating system. I'll die if that's removed."

Griffon's head bobbed curiously. "No kiddin'? What if you put it back in?"

"What if I put your dumb bird brain back in after I took it out of your head?"

"Least my brain's actually in my head. Oh oh, does that mean you can swap heads onto different bodies since your brain is in your chest?!"

"No!" 9S rapidly tapped his paneling until it closed, and the synthetic skin smoothed back over it. "That's not how it works! My head is where all my external interface systems and my memory data are!"

_And black boxes store your consciousness._

Assuming the black box wasn't what pumped that imitation blood through him, 9S functionally had two sets of paired vital organs. One brain for memory, another for control; one heart for his body, and one to house his soul.

Griffon must have felt the subtle change in his mental state, because when V glanced up, three pupils were staring directly into his eyes.

He subtly shook his head and leaned on his cane. "Shall we move on?"

* * *

9S flung the massive rusty slab of a sword. Unlike his small sword, it arced in a perfect, deadly circle and sang a bone-crushing song as it moved through the air—too heavy to pit Shadow against. He closed the distance instead, ducking inside the arc instead of outside of it. In the corner of his eye, golden sparks. Around 9S' fists, an obscuring flurry that materialized into black fists with wickedly curved tusks. If he didn't know any better, he'd have said it was a Devil Arm. A rapid combination of punches sent shockwaves into the space between them. Griffon laid down a blinding blockade of lightning bolts, and V dodged left to follow their arc.

Golden sparks. V dropped flat and the shockwave rushed over him, snapping the longer grasses in half. Rushing footsteps closed in on him. 9S appeared above him, fists in hand.

V rolled, revealing Shadow just beneath him. Inky tendrils shimmering with red patterns lashed up from the void, dragging 9S down.

V observed his valiant effort to keep himself airborne and avoid landing in range of her more dangerous attacks.

This was _fun._

Was it Vergil's echo within him? Or the same thin trickle of Sparda's blood that spared him a human's fate before this world's gods?

9S swapped to the sword. At a snap from V, Shadow retreated as 9S swung it downward, splitting open the earth where she had been. The sword re-materialized along his back, tilted almost diagonal to his body to keep it from dragging in the dirt.

Griffon circled around him. "A little big for you isn't it, boy-bot? You overcompensating for something?"

9S tilted his head. "Something like what?"

"Ha! Nevermind, guess you're not _that_ lifelike."

V shot Griffon a look that could have plucked his feathers clean. "Are we done so quickly?"

9S crossed his arms and held a hand thoughtfully under his chin. "Yeah. We could keep going, but I don't think there's much either of us could do to get a definitive result without the last bit."

_There would be if you weren't so carefully avoiding anything that could truly hurt me._

It would have made a hypocrite of him to say as much aloud, so he merely smiled. "Very well. I am your eager student."

The rusty slab on 9S' back vanished, replaced by the smaller golden blade he normally used. "That was a good tactic hiding Shadow beneath you."

"With you attacking my sluggish pace, it only makes sense to keep you off your feet."

"Hmm…" 9S dropped down onto his calves and gestured for V to sit with him. "You said your father had enemies. Is that why you can fight like this?"

A wave of nostalgia came over V as tangibly as the breeze. For the first time, he struggled with an equivalent question. He couldn't decide if it was extremely personal or not personal at all.

"What were you doing before I arrived?"

9S' cheer evaporated. V waited for the question to be dropped so they could move on, but 9S slowly rubbed his palms over knees.

"I guess I was dying."

V didn't bat a lash.

"When I went into the tower," 9S went on, his voice quiet but stable. "The plan was to die destroying it. Instead I woke up on the ground. Mission accomplished. I went to the forest, but no matter how many machines I killed; it didn't do anything for me. I was exhausted. So, I just left my weapons and found a place to lay down somewhere no one would bother me. I'd been lying on top of the rubble for weeks when I spotted you flying overhead."

"And you thought I was a YoRHa unit," V recalled. No wonder 9S looked so ragged and filthy; he had risen from his grave. He sighed softly. That meant it was his turn. "My family hunts demons. All of us can fight."

9S' gaze drifted up, toward Griffon. "But your familiars..."

"They're special. Without me, they would fade away. And without them, I lack strength." V ran his hands along his cane and gave a pinched smile. "I am… the weakest in the family. So it has been since my birth."

What 9S thought of this, V couldn't tell. He turned his attentions to opening his screen and enlarging it so they could both see it easily.

"Last lesson," he began. "This one's important. Resistance members mostly use sword weapons, but all of them carry guns, so I want you to get familiar with Pod's shield functions. A060 is a near-field barrier, R070 is far-field. I've only ever voice-controlled pod programs outside of active combat situations, but you'll have to since you don't have an FFCS circuit."

V blinked slowly at the display. His eyes had already wandered away to the list on the far left. "And all of these are also Pod's programs?"

"Yeah. Pod 042 is set to this one." His finger tapped a program designated R010. "It's a basic laser program. Pretty utilitarian, mine is set to the same thing. I'm not going to use it on you, though. I'll just be laying down basic suppressive fire."

"And I can command Pod to use any of these programs?"

"Some of them have pretty hefty recharge times, and a few I think probably don't apply to you, but yeah."

V grinned and hooked Pod 042 in close with his cane. "Excuse us a moment. I'd like to prepare."

* * *

Pod 153 was quite faithful to the limitations of a common gun. Every few seconds, she paused for approximately the time it might take an experienced soldier to reload. 9S was sitting comfortably beneath her, on the same semi-real chair he liked to sit on when he went fishing. All V had to do was get to him and subdue him.

Simple.

Pod 153's fire lulled. V darted from the safety of the barrier.

"_Sitzfleisch._"

Pod 042's chassis opened. 9S' head jerked up and he abandoned his seat in time to avoid the gravity well that consumed the area. Pod 153 began firing again, independent of 9S' attention. Griffon sailed overhead to return first. Like Pod 042, her protocols demanded that she take self-preserving measures. An easily abused system, but truthful at least. It was natural to focus on an active threat.

V advanced with Shadow lurking beneath his feet. 9S ran at him without waiting, golden sword in hand.

"Cross-check."

9S was quick to catch on. His head flicked toward Pod 042, and he dodged back as the mirage program lashed out at him. The overclock field did him no favors at close range. Shadow formed fully beneath V's feet, her head melting and morphing only to shoot out of the ground in a sharp spike that V danced forward on, violet magic coating his cane as he leaped at 9S.

They clashed, and V felt the ring of metal vibrate up through his wrists. 9S didn't budge—not until he noticed the inky Shadow approaching his feet. He dashed backward, and V broke left.

"Capture and Blockade."

A luminous black wire of the same achromatic magic as the other skills leashed 9S, yanking him back to V's side. Though he managed to prepare his sword, it struck harmlessly at the shield, while V's cane found it's mark pressed firmly against 9S' neck.

V smiled, only half out of breath as Shadow half-growled, half-purred against 9S' back. "I believe that's checkmate."

9S nodded, disengaged Pod 153 and dropped his sword. The moment V let him go, he trotted over to where he'd left his pack and returned with a water. "That's three rounds, so we'll had back as soon as you want."

V drank gratefully. The forest kingdom's water tasted very different from the oasis water—worse, in his opinion, but it was worth it to keep 9S out of the desert. He felt pretty good actually, but he would be glad to get out of the baking heat and back to the more pleasant atmosphere of the city. "Your silence surprises me."

"Really? I don't think there's anything to say." Though he said as much, no sooner did he drum his fingers against his arm and think on it, he continued: "Did you make keywords for _all_ the pod programs?"

"Barring the one for repair, yes."

"And you managed to familiarize yourself with what they did and use them tactically in less than an hour…"

"I made use of some of your quirks as well. Pods must protect themselves first if they are targeted, and though your telekinesis operates from both hands, you favor right-handed maneuvers."

9S sat his chin on his fist and rocked his head ponderously back and forth. Yet V could feel him staring right through the blindfold.

"You have something to ask?" he offered with a smirk. "There are three questions left in our game."

9S quickly shook his head and pretended to be very interested in the grass. "No, I was just thinking… Even if everyone in your family is stronger than you, I don't think you're weak. I think you'd make a really awesome scanner."

Tightness settled in V's chest, startling him nearly as much as 9S' words. His fingers found their way to the tooth hanging from his neck—a gaudy thing that he held little love for and had still become rather attached to.

He had never worried at it before, but it was all he had against the unfamiliar warmth and slightly painful fluttering that gathered in his stomach.


	30. Shared Fates

Dull light greeted them when the elevator opened, reflecting gray on the trickle of water that flowed through the clogged pipe. V had grown used to the flat, cloud-scattered daylight that dominated in between brief but oppressive hours of unchecked sunshine, but this was different. The air was different. Like all his memories of early November afternoons in some secret nook with books that all bore his name within; cool air and warm tea and windowpanes growing foggy where he was curled close, his ears filling with gentle pattering against panes and gables and the occasional cry of a lonely grackle among the naked trees.

"Just in time," said 9S. "It looks like it's going to rain soon."

The skies were a more sullen gray than usual, and the clouds hung low enough to obscure the peak of the highest skyscraper. It hadn't rained since he arrived, but the earth was an hour at most from receiving what it was owed.

Fortuitous that he chosen today to be picky about his meal. If luck was still with him, the worst of it would be over before they needed to venture out for more.

V followed 9S down onto the tower fall and along the looming but stable path they always took. The frequent need to descend only to climb again was a bother, but the effort kept them out of sight. Another downside of his chosen roost, V thought. It sat right on the corner of the widest, least blocked road to the desert. Ever since 9S returned from his errand, he had noticed an increase in activity. It was only a matter of time until one of them looked up.

Ahead, 9S stuck out an arm to stop him climbing the next block.

"Androids."

"How many?"

"Full crew. Stay low."

Following no such rule for himself, 9S climbed higher and vanished.

V leaned back against the nearest wall, crossed his arms, and waited. They had been down in the caves for two, maybe three hours. It was possible a crew had arrived in that time. Clearing a small area where they had once had an outpost was one thing—they couldn't be planning to clear the entire crater out could they?

9S dropped down next to him, and right away V knew something was amiss. He was too quiet. Still in a way that had nothing to do with stealth.

"Our path is blocked," V guessed.

9S nodded and moved past him at a sleepwalk. "There's a spot ahead I can keep watch from."

V glanced up at the block they usually climbed. It wasn't the highest peak, but it was an excellent vantage point. The location 9S proposed was a broken pillar only a little taller than V. Because the Resistance had been so busy clearing out the southern end of the crater, the debris had shifted to create a mild slope. Where 9S sat, he could see everything, and V could still see him. What 9S meant was 'a spot where he could keep watch and still be within arm's reach.'

It wasn't like him to explain so half-heartedly.

V squinted down between the obscuring geometry. There were fifteen, maybe twenty androids milling around. Drilling equipment, two flatbed trucks precariously parked on the far slope, another idling in the small area they had managed to dig out at the bottom of the pit, and some kind of pulley they had attached to the dead goliath machine.

Nothing out of the ordinary so far as he could tell, but clearly there was more to it than what he could see. 9S was in a closed room of his own making, and V had little choice but to draw his cloak in close and settle down. The minutes stretched, and the silence with it, punctuated by the occasional distant roar of a drill or a muffled explosion that V initially mistook for thunder. He didn't know how long it had been when 9S' voice parted his half-doze.

"Ask me something."

He turned his head enough to make out the black shape of 9S' back above him. "Like what?"

"Anything."

"…Where were you made?"

"How old are you?"

Complicated, but luckily inconsequential. "Twenty-eight."

"Hm. Younger than I thought." V thought he detected disappointment, but couldn't imagine why. "I don't actually know where I was made. YoRHa manufacture happens in a fully automated facility." A faint, bitter smile lifted his cheek. "Wouldn't want anybody to know about the black box."

His head drooped, down to where he was idly twiddling his fingers in his lap. "Ask me something else."

"There are only two left."

"I know."

V curled tighter into his cloak against the permeating clamminess. He had gently steered them away from unpleasant topics before, but always after he had unwittingly set 9S off, and never at request. There was something souring about being asked. It was too much like providing the spade for 9S to bury his unpleasant thoughts with.

A strangled gasp spared him the need to decide if he would or wouldn't be made an accomplice. The resistance androids were arranged in a twitching circle around something they had dug out.

White dust snowed down. Above, under the pressure of 9S' grip was pulverizing the edge of the pillar.

"What did they find?" asked V.

Through teeth clenched not with anger but some much more grim sentiment that V couldn't place, 9S answered: "The twins."

A rush of briny wind heralded the rain. It fell first in a whisper and then in a roaring sheet that blurred the world to nothing beyond a few yards. V could no longer see the androids, but he could make out their panicked voices bouncing between drops so overloaded they were more akin to wet hail than rain. Headlights pierced the gloom and revved engines filled the space left by absent thunder. They sped up the cliffs to the safety of the asphalt before the world could turn to mud.

9S remained stone still even after they were gone, indifferent to the torrent drenching them both. V climbed up to his vantage point. The rain complicated things, but he thought he could make out two red bodies in the dirt.

"Twins…" V mused. He had heard of twin androids—in the reports. "Devola and Popola? They were still alive?"

"Different individuals of the same model. Left alive intentionally after a mass decommission of their type." His wet gloves squeaked as his fingers clenched into tight fists. "Everywhere they went they were blamed for failing to restore mankind, even though it wasn't them. Even here…"

V suspected there was more than simple sympathy involved. Over and over, the tower proved to be the root of something he still didn't fully understand and probably never would.

9S looked south; toward the empty road back to their camp. "We should go."

Far below, the red spots were vanishing. Sinking, most likely.

Perhaps it was because they were twins, but V wanted to see their faces before the earth took them. He jumped without waiting for 9S. What little light there was grew even dimmer as he descended into the pit. He dropped into several inches of rainwater already filling the empty space between the cliff-face and the natural dam of the tower fall.

The twin androids could almost be mistaken for dolls. Though their bodies had been crushed in places, the lubricant that ran through them had already been washed away. Their death was neat. Bloodless. The cold had not affected their warm pallor, nor had their passing discolored them. They lay unmoving, their red hair slick and half-afloat, with mud sullying clothes that did not resemble the uniforms of the Resistance or YoRHa.

Their intertwined hands drew him into a kneel, where he was assailed by the matching, wilted flowers in their hair and the differences in how they lay: the straighter haired flat on her back with her empty hand placed peaceably on her stomach, while the one whose hair curled even when soaked lay slightly on her side, arm—broken by the towerfall— reaching to cradle her sister.

Instinctively, he recognized which was the older, which was the younger, and which had died first. It punctured something deep inside of him, dizzying him with breath either lost or held too long as his mind tumbled with a thousand too close thoughts of too distant memories.

9S landed beside him with a heavy splash. The water was rising. "They helped me get into the Tower," he said, a small spark in his voice despite the rain. "And it was all for nothing."

"What reason did they have to give their lives to you?" V asked. "Did they know you?"

"No. They just wanted to help. When they were left alive…they were re-programmed to feel guilt. All the time. No matter what they did, it would never be enough to make it go away. Because they—because their model type was trusted with humanity and they failed."

"The relapses were not within their control."

9S shuddered and hugged himself tight. "…I know."

The way he said it made V look up. There was intimacy there. The same that had slipped out when V first said he didn't want to talk about his mother. Of course there was. 9S didn't have to work to sympathize with them. 9S was them. Complete with guilt over something he hadn't done and had no choice in.

The grooves of the cane bit into his palm as he rose. "It bothers you to see them like this."

"Everybody dies, V."

"That is not what I mean." The waters were rising. The faces of the twins and the blossom of their red hair all that was visible, spreading like blood. "Abandoned by their own kind for a crime they didn't commit. Deaths as lacking in dignity as their lives."

9S lips pressed together, his brows shifting down beyond the rim of his blindfold. "Of course it bothers me. What are you even getting at?"

"I'm asking what you want to do about this."

_"What?"_

9S' fists were balling. His chest was starting to heave. V knew he was pushing too hard. He didn't care.

Thirty years of resentment—of thinking 'if only Dante had not existed'—while he had childishly avoided thinking of how things might have been _with_ Dante. In his wildest imaginings, they could have protected Eva, and spared them both so much pain. In a realer world, they could have at least had one another as they grew up and grew strong enough to avenge her. Perhaps they could have… Maybe it would have been better to have suffered and survived and ultimately met destruction hand-in-hand with his twin was a thought too impossible and too unbearable.

"Does it sit easy on you to think of what may happen when the other androids return?"

9S hesitated. His voice came out small. Lost. "Emotions are prohibited."

"Then your makers are senseless and cruel far beyond what I already believed them to be."

As V saw his own failed past, 9S was certainly seeing his own. V would drown them both in that pit before he let 9S cocoon himself in the same frigidity Vergil had embraced.

Their lips and the narrow points of the twin's noses were all that remained above the water.

"What authority demands you leave them here?"

"It's none of my business."

"They gave their_ lives_ for you," V said harshly.

"And look at what good it did them!" 9S snapped. "Look at the good it did anybody! I should've been buried under all this shit with them!"

"Perhaps. But you weren't." Cold filth crept toward V's knees. He sloshed closer to 9S and looked down at him from within his sopping hood.

"You do not have to accept this."

Permission, it seemed, was honey that could draw 9S out of himself. "What can I do?"

"If you desire better for them, act on it."

"I don't know _how_, V! I'm not asking your opinion; I'm asking for help! You're the human, so please—" He dropped into the water, yanking both twins up out of the mud. He might have been crying. Who could tell in a rain like this? "Please tell me what I'm supposed to do."

Grief was complicated. And 9S clearly had no idea where to begin unraveling its intricacies.

"First, let's get them out of here."

* * *

Cold mud squelched between V's feet and the soles of his sandals, leaving him more reliant on his cane for balance than he had been in a long while. The rain had let up from a drowning torrent to a sullen cascade, complete with the occasional distant rumble of thunder.

"You're sure you want to do this?" he asked.

9S cradled the straight-haired twin, Popola, in his arms and nodded solemnly. "I don't want to bury them, especially on a day like this. And I don't want anyone to bother them. This way…I know they'll be left alone." He frowned. "That must sound silly. It's not like they know the difference."

"The dead don't feel grief," V said calmly. "It's not for them, and it isn't rational."

9S sighed. "Humans are strange…"

Shadow rumbled under the weight of the curly-haired twin. V patted her head, and they both followed 9S to the coast. From the edge of the ruined roads, the clouds and rain seemed to go on forever. 9S led them toward a long, broken bridge in the opposite direction of the missile. Lightning danced on the horizon, and V hoped it kept its distance.

As they walked between the rusted, twisting metal and stepped over support cables that had long since abandoned their post, 9S spoke. "Can I ask another question…?"

"Of course."

"How much do you know about 2B?"

V's eyes slid to the side. 9S' tone was not accusatory, and his face was pointed forward, toward his destination. He wouldn't have anyway, but there was no reason to consider playing dumb.

"When did you figure it out?"

9S turned, gently swinging Popola's body with him, and nodded toward the coast. "When we came here together before, and you were waiting right there for me. I wasn't myself, but you were acting strangely too. If felt like you were apologizing to me, and then you brought up me maybe having bad memories because I was a soldier. It was suspicious."

"I thought myself good at keeping secrets," said V, with a small smile. "But you make a liar of me so easily."

"I'm a scanner; I pick up on these things." His mouth pinched, and he put visible effort into adding what little sweetness he could muster to a bitter laugh. "I always do."

V raised a brow but didn't let his mind drift too far from the answer he owed.

"I know that she was your partner," he began carefully. "I found her flight unit and listened to the first half of the message—the part she intended for a stranger's ears. I don't think I would have needed to hear it to know you had a partner. When you talk of the past, you say 'we'."

"I could have meant Pod."

"Pod's still with you, and you don't say 'we' now."

9S cracked a weak smile. "Yeah… I guess I don't."

"I know that she died," V continued. He turned his cane pensively in his hand. "While inquiring if Pod 042 was passed to you after her death, I found out how. That's all."

"I see."

The broken edge of the road loomed, and 9S stopped short to lay down his cargo. "Here, Shadow. Thanks for your help." He laid Devola beside her sister, using the dwindling rain to wipe away some of the more stubborn grime that had caked onto them. When he could think of nothing else to do for them, he replaced their hands as they had been, and squeezed them tightly together.

"Is there something else I should do here?"

"Offerings were customary." The rain was letting up. V lowered his hood and dragged his fingers through hair that had soaked through. "Flowers or something meaningful."

9S looked back down at the bodies. They were three or four kilometers out at sea, there were no flowers. Even the dandelions had not managed to find homes here. Instead, he untied his blindfold. After staring at it for several silent minutes, he gently bound their hands together with it.

"Thank you," he whispered. "And I'm sorry."

V followed along as 9S began dragging the bodies toward the precipice. He didn't ask for help, so V didn't offer. At the very edge, with a shout, he sent them toppling over into the dark sea. They sank with a meager splash, leaving behind a ring of blue-green foam that quickly vanished.

With the world so gray, 9S' eyes seemed as blue as the hidden sky. He glanced aside, watching V's face carefully. "Is it wrong that I sort of envy them?"

"No." Even if it was, V did too. "The task is done. Let's go home."

* * *

Where the bridge connected back to the mainland in a crooked jumble of asphalt, 9S stopped. His brows were drawn together beneath his soggy hair, and he was pressing his knotted hands against his coat.

"Hey, V...?" He rubbed gently at his gloves, keeping his eyes down. "YoRHa is—**I** am just like those twins. I won't be loved by this world, whether I'm alive or dead. If you're with me, it might endanger you. You might be targeted."

An easy smirk crossed V's lips and he tilted his head. "And?"

"Is it really alright for someone like me to stay with you…?"

V paused, struck by hearing aloud a question that had only ever existed as a background doubt in Vergil's younger mind. At heart, Vergil was V—someone who wanted to be protected. Someone who wanted to be loved. It had taken him a long time and a lot of bodies to internalize pushing others away, and never once had he framed it so kindly.

Though he did hate seeing 9S pretend at coldness when he was so unbearably kind, perhaps this had not entirely been for the android's sake. If V was honest, he simply couldn't watch that familiar cycle of foolishness repeat itself right in front of him.

"Do you think I would abandon any of my companions for such a dull reason as fear or pain?"

"...No."

"Good." He turned his back. "That's twenty."

"What?" 9S danced around V, his face left unguarded by his confusion. "How's that twenty?!"

"The point of the game is that the questions are supposed to tell us something about each other. I learned something about you," V answered, showing a cryptic, toothy smirk. "Did my answer tell you nothing about me?"

9S stared up at him, the gears turning and clearing the fog from his crowded mind. As V's words fully sank in, he began to fidget.

"O-oh. ...I guess it did."

Light came back to his dull eyes on the wings of a shy smile, and he scurried ahead on the empty road. The rain wasn't over, but high above, a single ray of light broke through the clouds.


	31. Coat of Many Leathers

A breeze tickled at 9S' face. His nerve sensors tingled with the chill that had become more and more common as the October days went by. The sunlight, bright as ever but only faintly warm, shed its immobile rays onto the bleached concrete where the fruit of his month-long labors lay stretched out for final inspection.

He had been telling himself for most of that time that this wasn't a good idea. V might have no fear of being seen in the company of a YoRHa android, but that didn't mean he should intentionally make himself look like one. Among the androids of the resistance, only Anthurium and Balm knew him as a friend of 9S and a non-threat. A gaunt and uncanny stranger that passed for YoRHa couldn't expect a warm welcome given the mass infection, the report, or the general wariness of outsiders who cropped up with no warning.

Unfortunately, the only other alternative was to pack V even deeper into Resistance clothes for the winter. While it would have been simpler, it would leave him too open to being casually approached.

So. YoRHa clothes it was.

Unparalleled a scanner as 9S was, sewing wasn't a part of his skillset. The only way he had managed to cobble a coat together that was big enough for V to fit into was by using the jacket he'd arrive in as a base. And enlisting generous help from the only beings in the zone who regularly wore clothes and wouldn't ask questions: The amusement park machines.

That part was going to remain a secret. He had a feeling V wouldn't find it funny that clowns had made his clothes. And anyway, even machines with fingers were not especially delicate about using them so 9S did have to do a lot of the finer work. And the material gathering. The damaged coat he'd left with his spare parts, a few lengths of leather clumsily retrieved from beneath the heavy armor of dead combat units, two white boar hides, and a spare resistance shirt had gone into the effort.

The high collar and thoroughly lined hood 9S was especially proud of.

V's cane clicked behind him, prompting him to quickly tamp down the prideful grin on his face and rise from his squat.

"You're sure you want it like this?"

V circled around. "My alternatives are to live in the desert or succumb to the cold."

"Don't be so dramatic," 9S teased. "I mean the look of it."

V hooked the hood onto the edge of his cane and pulled it up. He held it briefly against his chest, his eyes closing with the cozy warmth of the sun-soaked leather before he threw it on right over his shirt. The sleeves were short, as 9S suspected they would be. V was a lot taller than a standard YoRHa unit, and though he was bony, his chest and shoulders were still pretty broad.

If V minded the less than perfect fit, he kept it to himself and focused on doing the buttons. "It's lighter than I expected."

"Well, yeah. YoRHa androids run pretty hot. Our uniforms are fancy granted, but they're made for ventilation rather than heat retention." Now it was his turn to circle around. "I patched in a bunch of animal hide to compensate... Is it warm enough?"

"Time will tell." V flipped up the hood and carefully tucked his hair back out of his face. "Appropriate shoes and gloves before the snow falls would be wise."

9S mumbled an acknowledgement, but he barely heard what was said. He was nagged by a sensation that he had met someone who looked like V before. Somewhere so far back in his memory that it might even have pre-dated the first time—the real first time—he met 2B.

"You're smiling."

Jumpily, he touched his fingers to his lips. He turned away, less concerned about the smile than the rest of his face. It hadn't been that long, but he missed the days when V couldn't actually tell what 9S was focusing on. Now it seemed he was constantly caught in the act and V always turned his eyes away with that narcissistic smirk on his face. How was that supposed to be fair? Every time 9S caught him looking, he maintained eye contact until 9S couldn't stand it anymore and had to shift his attention to literally anything else.

What the hell had he been thinking throwing his visor into the ocean?

As much as he couldn't have admitted it, it wasn't the worst thing to ever happen. V's cool gaze attentively reading his face had strange and exhilarating electricity to it. He couldn't tell where it was coming from, and it barely mattered. Personality or programming, to have the attention of a human all to himself made him feel like he was freshly manufactured.

He'd told himself it wouldn't last forever and darkly reminded himself he didn't actually want it to last forever but such mental affirmations no longer had any effect.

"You look good is all." He straightened his clothes busily even though they were going to wrinkle all the exact same places they always did. "I did say you'd make a really cool scanner. Maybe we should make up a designation for you."

V raised a brow at him and lowered the hood. The light at his back threw his face into shadow, but 9S could make out a raised brow. "A designation?"

"Yeah." He backed away, framing V between his fingers. "A model number and type, in case you run into someone."

"Is V not sufficient?"

"Sure until somebody asks what the V stands for."

V twirled his cane with absent ease. It reminded 9S a little of the tricks B units sometimes did with their swords. They were always competing to see who could do the coolest, most dexterity-demanding move.

2B, of course, had never been interested.

"Vanguard," he finally offered.

The completely serious expression on V's face got to 9S more than the suggestion, and he dissolved into helpless laughter. "I didn't think you were the kind who was bad at naming things! That doesn't suit you at all!"

V's brow lowered, his mouth twitching down. "And what would you suggest?"

"I dunno." He pressed his fist to his lips to help keep his giggles from seeping out—at least while V was glaring like that. "Variable?"

"Ambiguous for a name that is supposed to define my purpose."

"I guess, but isn't a vanguard just a frontline unit? That would be covered by B and D units."

The shiny brown-gold corona around V's hair shifted as he combed his hair back into place with his fingers and sighed. "I don't plan on giving my name to anyone. If you must, let me remain an unknown prototype, designated only as V. It is fine to simply say you do not know what it stands for."

9S' eyes locked up into a skeptical squint. He was a scanner; he wasn't just going to go around saying he didn't know things.

He'd think of something.

* * *

**Noted from Project Gestalt Reports:**

**2016: The Hamelin Organization is formed in response to discovery of the drug Luciferase—an anti-White Chlorination treatment. This organization would later expand to include the World Purification Organization, which spearheaded Project Gestalt.** **2018: Luciferase is discovered to be most effective on children. Young adults are scouted for military recruitment.** **Luciferase was later found to only slow the onset of the syndrome, and those treated often went berserk and turned on their allies.**


	32. The Shape of A Treasure

With the advent of November, the honey-thick humidity of the forest finally receded and all that remained was the dry, gritty warmth from the western desert. The canopy had thinned somewhat, their sheddings giving a pleasant crunch to 9S' steps. A few white blocks had managed to crash through the lightened boughs, and lay half-hidden in bushes and broken branches that had fallen with them.

From just ahead of him, V spoke. "Something of interest?"

"I wish." He dropped his hand from where it shielded his eyes and hopped to catch up. "I read a lot about trees changing color in autumn, but I guess these megaflora don't do that."

"A shame. It does make quite the display."

"Almost all of the old human records compare it to fire. Until I saw a picture I thought maybe they actually…"

He stopped as he realized what a naïve thing he was about to admit, but V was already chuckling. None of his usual smugness came through; he seemed surprised.

9S awkward half-laughed along and bounced ahead down one of the steeper hills. Humans were always likening things to other things. Androids had that ability too, of course; a lack of imagination was antithetical to predictive ability. But the differences in perception and processing occasionally made human metaphors more of a puzzle than 9S expected. There didn't seem to be any solid parameters to what could and couldn't be compared. They saw fire in autumn leaves and sunsets, which did seem pretty accurate if the pictures were to be believed, but they also saw it in things like red hair and rubies.

They did say humanity had an extraordinary capacity for pattern recognition, but the more 9S read, the more he thought that particular sense might have been a little overactive.

A mechanical thump and hiss brought him skidding to a stop. Heavy but hollow chains rattled against stone, and he immediately ducked to one side and frantically flapped his arm to signal V to get out of sight.

Down below, where the slope leveled out into a bed of brown leaves clogging a trickling stream, a rare machine type stomped through the clearing. It was one of the few that weren't based on stubby-type units. This was a monster in the shape of a bipedal lizard with shards of twisted metal plating protruding from its back and a prehensile tail built from a massive length of roller chain.

"Shit… I was really hoping they stopped production on these."

From behind him, V's voice came out slow and incredulous. "The machines building dinosaurs is a regular occurrence?"

"More like a rare one." He dropped lower into a squat as it turned in their direction. It raised its nose as if sniffing the air and moved on. 9S let out a tightly controlled breath. "But yeah, they do diversify their combat designs on occasion. I fought at least one machine that looked like a moose."

He shuddered. Large herbivores were the only thing in the world he still feared, and machine animals that much more so. They couldn't be plied with bait or whatever pheromone cocktail was in the sachets.

No answer came from behind him. Not even the low hum V let out when he was processing an idea. 9S glanced back, only to find V's eyes dark and glittering. He couldn't really be thinking—No, 9S already knew that was exactly what he was thinking.

"V, **no**."

"Tell me," V purred, stepping away from the cliff and out into the open. "Will it go away on its own?"

"To another part of the forest, at least."

"I've no interest in looking over my shoulder for its inevitable return." The cane twisted and flickered as V's grip changed, and he leered in a way that sent an uncomfortable tingle down 9S' back. "Are you not up to the challenge?"

Something about V's eagerness unsettled 9S. Something had always unsettled him about it. It bordered on something so familiar, but so unintelligible; something that might finally shed light on why android battle fever mimicked love of all things if only he thought about it in just the right way.

Maybe. He wasn't sure. On the sliding scale from 6O to Jackass, V was in his own special category as probably the least love-y person 9S had ever met.

His reservations and the nagging sense of being on the cusp of understanding something important aside, 9S had not forgotten about the third familiar. Encountering this rare type restored flicker of hope that he might finally get to see Nightmare, but he was careful to not get ahead of himself. Special machines were not simple enemies to defeat even with hacking. Their defensive systems were multi-layered and often just as aggressive as their physical attack patterns. 9S had managed to kill one alone, but he had been fueled by other things at the time.

E-drugs, for example.

Pretty suicidal choice given he wasn't a combat type and had to give himself a massive dose to get anything to happen, but it had made sense given the kind of mindset he'd been operating under at the time.

"Alright," he yielded. "But listen; there's some things to watch out for: It will try to kick you or hit you with the tail if you're directly in front of it. And it's fast about it. Also, if it starts breathing smoke, get out of the way. Fire and a high-powered laser come from the mouth. I think the highest powered one I've ever seen on a ground unit."

"On top of having guns."

"Yes, on top of having guns."

V smiled. Atop his raised arm, Griffon materialized with a low cackle. "What are we waiting for?"

The moment they entered the stream where it was idling, three linked-sphere types erupted up out of the ground. He glanced at V, but his eyes were focused front and the tattoos were already twisting off of his skin in syrupy strands. There was no evidence of hesitation.

It took .07 seconds for 9S to check that he was using the right chips, 0.5 to prioritize the linked-types according to which would create the most chaos on the field, and another 2.4 to hack the gunner type. It exploded in a spray of combusting oils, knocking the other two off course.

The dinosaur machine was unaffected. Shadow was keeping it occupied while Griffon rained lightning ineffectually along its back.

"Maybe we should back off?!" 9S shouted.

"How about you fuck off?!" Griffon crowed, darting out of the way of a tail swipe. "And fuck you too, asshole!"

From somewhere he couldn't triangulate, V called out. "A140 at my signal."

9S grumbled a sigh. The drill types converged on him, the half-rusted grind of their spinning bodies boring into 9S' aural systems. He shifted sideways, kicking into overclock and sparing a hasty glance around. V wasn't on the field. And overclock didn't last forever. He darted beneath the near-stopped serpentine bodies to find their cores. The first drill unit took him several frustrating attempts to hack into owing to its moving core. The second, damaged by the eventual detonation of its partner, took half the time and exploded so close to 9S that hot oil splattered across his cheek.

He ignored the sizzling. There would be time for staunching gel later. "Where's V?!"

"POD 042 IS WITHIN COMBAT ZONE."

He gritted his teeth. V didn't have any signals that could be tracked, and it wasn't a good time to check the map for Pod 042.

To his left, Griffon and Shadow cleared away from a cloud of dark smoke that began to billow from the monster-type's mouth. Flame belched forth, solidifying into a thick beam of plasma that whitened the cliff sides with its light and vented into the sky from between the machine's back plating.

9S scrambled out of the way as it swung the beam into the surrounding crags, gouging wood and stone alike and scattering clouds of dust and splinters into the air.

_Phweeeeeee—t!_

9S' head jerked up. Through the debris, he saw the V's thin silhouette perched above at the height of the cliff. Shadow lurked at his feet and Griffon perched aboard his shoulder. His cane was tucked away under one arm. Below him, the dinosaur machine roared up in red-eyed fury.

V answered with a contemptuous laugh. "Dying to play, aren't we?"

Its eyes flashed and it crouched.

9S realized the whistle was his signal and jumped to execute the command. Pod 153 launched the Gravity program as quickly as she was able, catching the machine before it could complete its leap.

Above, V raised his arm and snapped.

A strange sensation of density filled the clearing, as though the air had grown twice as heavy as the moment before. White blocks shook free from the canopy, joined by an amorphous black shape that fell like a comet. It struck the dinosaur machine where it struggled against the gravity well, crashing both of them into the ground and kicking up a strong blast of dust.

The thing that unfurled itself from the crater was difficult for 9S to make sense of. A creature seemingly made of half-solidified tar, liquid enough to leave viscous strands of black ooze on everything it touched, but hard enough to have a defined, barrel-chested shape and swinging club-like limbs tipped in something that wasn't even pretending to be hands. It put 9S in mind of the mouth of some horrific, sucking sea creature. From within its chest, a single, lidless violet eye the same color as V's magic stared out unblinking and expressionless.

Nightmare.

It grabbed the peculiar machine, half-crushing, half-drowning it in its oozing, semi-solid form as it pulled the strong jaw open. Particles gathered before its eye, its own field-whitening laser firing down into the creature's chassis. Again its plates filled with overflowing light, but this time it thrashed wildly, then feebly, before its eyes sparked and went out.

All that was left was a hunk of red hot, melted metal with a limp chain tail attached.

9S was pressed as deeply into the contours of the cliff as he could possibly be without burrowing into it. The base imperative on which all other things in his programming stood screamed at him.

This thing was dangerous. _V was in control of it._ He had to protect V. _Against what? V could destroy anything he wanted with a familiar like that! _There had to be a reason he didn't use it, it was dangerous. _Yeah, dangerous enough that he didn't NEED to use it!_ Dangerous dangerous dangerous danger-!

With a grunt, he scrambled up the cliff, shielding his eyes and coughing as he inhaled the dust.

"V?! Are you-!"

The question stopped existing before he finished it. Everything did. Even motion and sound peeled back from his battle-heightened senses, until the only thing that was real in his entire world was the halo of short, white hair shining through the falling dust that fell as gently as mist. The single visible eye that might or might not have been blue. The glinting cane reflecting light in perfect silver, warping into the gentle curve of a katana. The tails of the jacket that billowed in the outline of a familiar skirt.

In that perfect stillness so filled with light, her telling, too-gentle smile did not feel like an illusion.

_"2B…?"_

His whisper was insubstantial as the steam rising from his body, but even that feather-light disturbance was enough to break the spell. All too quickly, he was alone again atop a broken cliff in a broken world that no longer contained her.

But it did contain V.

Every splash of ink on his body had vanished, leaving only the faintest white trace of their unfilled space behind. The remaining ink of his third familiar had extended much further than 9S thought. His hair was nearly aglow in the sunlight, bright and swaying like a lunar tear in the breeze.

Below, Nightmare rumbled faintly, and dissipated into inky tendrils that seeped along the ground like roots. They crept up V's cane, vanished under his sleeves, and seeped up from his collar. Beneath hair that settled black, his eyes twinkled with the presence of a grin that he humbly kept from his lips.

For 9S, all of this happened in a sort of dreamy slow-motion, as though his overclock was still running. Behind his eyes, the infinite yet painfully brief moment replayed. It was just a mistake in his recognition. V had asked to look like a YoRHa unit, and he did, and the white hair just caught 9S off guard is all.

Just a trick of the light.

He stared blankly into V's eyes—green, he realized, not blue; like Anemone and the Commander and the faded pine needles that scattered the courtyard of the castle.

He didn't resemble her at all. Not in the slightest. But there was something so comfortable and familiar about certain parts of him. It was in the way he didn't lend his mind to irrelevant details, in his occasionally frustrating detachment, the way he focused in on the quickest means of accomplishing his goals.

Out of 9S' mouth, a whoop: "That was incredible!"

From his mind, a different thought entirely: Maybe V was what 2B would have been like if she had been a true B model.

It was alright to enjoy the illusion just a little, wasn't it?

* * *

**Noted from Project Gestalt Reports:**

**2018 - The National Weapons Laboratory was created in response to Japanese distrust of the Hamelin Organization. The lab's existence was considered top secret, codenamed 'Murasaki'. Their goal was to create weapons through human experimentation with maso, in order to remove the need for foreign aid in the war against Legion. Due to an incident in**

** 2026, the experiments were deemed too dangerous to continue with, and the organization was rendered defunct. **

**Related Files listed under: Project Snow White**


	33. Cold Rain

Rain fell over the city ruins, not yet snow but cold enough to make needles of every drop. Damp strands of hair clumped together over V's clammy skin, and his breath rose in clouds of mist as he blew heat onto his reddened fingertips. The pelt-lined coat was keeping the rest of him as warm as he'd hoped.

At least it wasn't a torrent this time. Had they been caught in a heavier rain, no amount of clothing would have kept him warm, and he didn't relish the concept of sitting around in just a cloak waiting for a chimera of leather and fur to dry.

Pod 042 remained quiet. While readings from the archive would have passed the time, they had taken shelter in an unfamiliar part of the city. Silence was best, and V was content to sit on the sill of an empty window and gaze at the grayed-out ruins. Though his first rainfall there had been tumultuous, he enjoyed the ruins most when it rained. The sense of controlled isolation in a place where he was never truly alone was a bittersweet echo to happier times, but never unwelcome. The simple square windows were so like a quiet reading nook, where at any time he could reach out to Griffon or Shadow.

Or to 9S, who was staring up at the rain out of a neighboring window.

It was rare for him to get such a long look at the android's resting expression. A great deal of their interactions were now a loop of him glancing at V, realizing V could see him or was already looking at him, and becoming self-conscious. V found 9S on his mind often and had no intention of looking any less, so 9S would have to live with the consequences of dropping his blindfold down into the sea with the twins.

For once, the android's attention was elsewhere—somewhere distant enough that he didn't notice V's gaze on him. He looked older in that muted gloom; grown into someone unfamiliar. They were equally quiet, but the qualities of their silence were so different that even with the visual similarities, V couldn't say that he resembled Nero, or even Vergil.

From out of his more recent memories, V recalled lurking in the dark outside of a building without electricity, and seeing Dante sitting alone among so much piled up trash. He had been wearing a similar expression to 9S as he sat there in the dark. At the time, other things had been on V's mind, and resentment clouded his vision. Even knowing better as he did now didn't quite quell those feelings. But now, seeing that same lightless expression on the face of the boy in front of him, he understood that look was not mere boredom.

9S wore solitude like a mourning veil. So too had Dante.

Sleepiness tugged at V, and he allowed it to guide him away from the disconcerting thought of his rowdy, obnoxious brother grieving him. He always found himself sleepy when he got a reprieve from the constant sunlight, and the cold had only made the waves of sudden lethargy more potent. Perhaps it wasn't too optimistic to think he might finally get some good sleep during the coming winter.

This wasn't the time or place though, so he stretched to rouse himself.

The movement caught 9S' attention. "Gloomy out, huh?"

"It's only rain," V said drowsily. "Does it look gloomy to you?"

"Yeah." He poked limply at a stray insect scuttling for shelter. "I'd rather it just snow."

V hummed and rested his chin against one hand. The sentiment wasn't lost on him, but they hadn't figured out exactly where to move to and the frigid rain served as a reminder they were running low on time to reach a satisfying conclusion. The entrance to the factory was blocked by tower debris, the desert would wear 9S down, the shore was unstable, inhospitable and too often frequented by resistance members, and neither of them wished to tempt fate by holing up in the forest kingdom until the spring thaw.

The amusement park had not yet been discussed, but V was already preparing himself for the reality that it was the best choice. Peaceful machines, lodgings that were at least partly furnished, even intact windows—but the noise…

It would be a long winter before he had another quiet moment like this.

"Tea," he whispered.

"What about it?"

"I said I would show you how to make it properly." He looked dreamily at the few ferns swaying below. "Though I don't suppose there are any dandelions left."

"I'll find them."

There was something dull and grim in his voice that drew V's attention, but 9S' eyes were obscured beneath his hair.

* * *

9S had never liked rain.

Sand was a physical nemesis that he had been more than willing to complain about to 2B. Rain he could never find the same energy for. Sand could be avoided. Given enough time, he could get rid of the endless annoying grains that got into everything if he had to deal with it. Rain wasn't avoidable that way. Even if he stayed out of it and stayed dry, it still altered the environment for hours, sometimes days after it had come and gone.

He stayed closer to her when it rained. He talked more. He needed to hear her voice. Anyone's voice. The pattering would have driven him crazy if he didn't. 2B had always answered in her terse way, but always with a hint of puzzlement. She knew he was acting strange. Once, she had asked if he was alright. He'd brushed it off like he always did, and maybe because it wasn't related to their mission or hers, or because that's just how she was, she never pressed the subject. How could he have told her that he felt like calling her name just to know someone could hear him?

He couldn't say he had such an irrational feeling. Not to her. 'Emotions are prohibited' would have been her answer and imagining her rigid inflection over the sound of the rain made his chest tighten painfully.

Heat tickled his nose and snapped him out of his thoughts. A mellow, floral scent drifted on warm tendrils of steam from a full bowl held in V's hands face. Beside them, the cauldron had been pulled from the low fire. A bouquet of dandelion heads floated just below the surface.

Tea. Right.

"No, I'm—I don't need it, remember? You have to take in as much energy as you can for winter. You drink it."

"You've mistaken me for a bear," said V, with a slight tilt of his lips. "Take it."

9S accepted with a sigh and wary scrunch of his lips. There wasn't really any purpose to ingesting the liquid, but it smelled nice, and V seemed keen to have him try it. The color was pretty, light and golden like fresh tree sap. The flavor still wasn't anything special, but it was pretty good compared to the bitter soup he had made. Just as light and floral as the dandelions, with a faint sweetness and an even fainter trace of chlorophyll that V probably couldn't taste.

It was the warmth that took him by surprise.

Cold was only a nuisance for 9S. It rarely ever presented the kind of danger to him that overheating did, but that didn't mean his surface temperature wasn't lower than usual. The heat blossomed in his mouth, spreading pleasantly through his jaw and up into his cheeks. The more he drank, the deeper the sensation went, diffusing into tense places and gently unwinding them. The heat from the cup seeped through his gloves, spreading a similar sensation through his fingers.

_Like a hot bath you can drink. _It was the first thing he could draw any kind of comparison to but he couldn't possibly have described it like that aloud.

V was examining him from over the rim of his own bowl. Though his lips were hidden, his eyes glittered with a subtle smile. His cheeks and nose were flushing as he experienced the same sensations 9S had.

A second, much deeper bloom spread within him.

He didn't think it was possible to experience an entirely novel emotion, but there it was welling up inside of him. New and blissful and free of any context that could dull or dilute it. It danced beyond the grasp of his understanding, like a comet that never landed where he thought it would. Yet he chased it frantically. If he spared even a single second it might fall somewhere he couldn't follow and be lost to him.

All he wanted was a name. Magic words he could speak or think to neatly explain this sensation. If it was happening to him, it must have had human equivalent, but it was almost too much for him to process, much less articulate.

Something amazing was happening, and it was all 9S could do to chase after the unnamed star falling through him for as long as he and V had tea to share.

* * *

_Noted from Project Snow White: Underground Research Reports:_

_2025 – Research into Number 6 … will likely mark a great leap forward in Gestalt research … Budgets for all other projects are to be frozen immediately. _

_2026 – Following the incident with Number 6 … this room will hold records on the methods used to control and/or cancels all forms of magic, including petrification and bestial transformation … Specifically, this should make it easier to complete a long-term storage solution for Number 6, as well as proceed with our Work on Number 7. _

_2026 Agenda item – Disguising the laboratory's above-ground facility as a mansion._


	34. The Devil's Trill

_But still the fragile seeds wait long for the sun to shine… Dark winter away…_

"ALERT: HUMMING WILL REDUCE SUBJECT V'S ABILITY TO HEAR REPORTS."

V raised blank eyes to Pod 042. "Humming...?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

His eyes dropped to the thick gloves that covered his forearms and the slightly too heavy to be comfortable boots that enclosed his feet. Another reward for some minor job done for Anemone. Unless the cold proved bitterer than either of them could predict, he would remain in that cocoon of leather and fur until the thaw. Between such careful bundling and the thickly clouded sky, perhaps that was why that lullaby suddenly…

A tingle on his neck prompted him to look over his shoulder. Across the room, thoroughly distracted from whatever fable he was reading through today, 9S eyes were wide and rapt.

Just how long had the pod let him go on?

Griffon's voice slithered through his mind. _Time flies when you're thinkin' bout your mo~mmy._

"That was new," said 9S, closing his display. "Do you like music, V?"

His lips twitched into a frown as he reflexively drummed his fingers along the cane. The thick gloves made the action unwieldy and clumsy. Having his sense of touch muffled was going to annoy him all winter. "_In Eternity, the Four Arts: Poetry, Painting, Music, and Architecture._ I enjoy all if they are masterful, though none as much as mastery of words."

"…So yes, but not as much as you like poetry, got it."

"PROPOSAL:" said Pod 153. "UNIT 9S SHOULD AVOID REQUESTING THE LOCAL JUKEBOX FROM ANEMONE."

9S scowled and swatted in her general direction. "I'm not crazy, Pod! He doesn't need that!"

"Indeed I don't." V smirked and pulled his gloves off. "If I want music, I am more than capable of making it myself."

He closed his eyes and tilted his head into the familiar position, his fingers holding the illusory instrument. In his other hand, he held his cane, ever so faintly aglow with a sheen of magic.

Familiar, crystalline notes answered his motions. He had only meant to play a few to make his point, but he launched into the first piece that came to mind. The graceful adagio ceased, replaced by an edgy, jumping allegro, like the flitting dance of a dragonfly on the hunt.

To start with such a difficult and aggressive final movement was unlike him—impatient to the point of inelegance. But as Griffon and Shadow could be particularly ruthless when they went too long without a challenge, so too did V find his fingers eager as fangs sinking greedily into the part of the sonata that would satisfy him most. Each touch strained with deliberate purpose against taut strings whose familiar, perfect tensions were sharp in his mind. Memory and magic intertwined in fearful symmetry and gave birth to cresting notes that blew along the concrete like lost breath. The feverish crescendo swelled, yielded, and swelled again, and when it finally abated into silence, the air was left trembling in its wake.

Or, given the slight shake of his hands and the flushed heat radiating up from his collar, it may have been his own exhilaration. The naked, slack-jawed awe on 9S' was better than applause.

He was leaning forward so far he was practically on his toes and as soon as he realized V was done, he broke forward, dancing up to him and bobbing around to try and find the source of the sound. "How'd you do that?!"

"Magic," V answered plainly.

9S' nose scrunched and he opened his mouth to protest, but he just as quickly clamped it and paced away. "Magic, of course. I just need a compatible interface…!" He whipped back around. "What instrument was that?"

"Violin."

"Violin, violin…" He laid down in the way he typically did when he had some minor maintenance task to run, or was otherwise tinkering around in his internal systems.

V watched with a bemused smile and raised brow, and tilted his head conspiratorially to Pod 042. "What is he doing?"

"HYPOTHESIS: YORHA UNIT 9S WILL REPLICATE A VIOLIN BY EMPLOYING A RUDIMENTARY REPLICATION PROGRAM. EXAMPLE: FISHING STOOL."

"Curious..." He brushed his hair up and out of his face to allow the winter air to cool him back down. "Let's leave him to it then. I believe we were on Project Snow White?"

"NEGATIVE. UNIT 9S WILL COMPLETE TASK IN LESS THAN—"

"I got it!"

9S bolted upright and scrambled to his feet. In his hands, a faint static-ridden afterimage of a violin and an accompanying bow took shape. He tilted his head in a surprisingly accurate mimicry of the correct posture, and began to play.

The screech was instant and expected, but it still got an unbidden wince out of V.

9S huffed and tried again more gently. Too gently. The strings whispered, but produced only a faint hum that persisted until he discovered the correct amount of pressure to apply. Half a second of a single pure note rewarded them both, and he beamed.

"It works!"

It was the smallest victory possible, but it proved that 9S had, in essence, created a fully functional violin in less than two minutes, and V did not intend for a moment to cut down the glow of his accomplishment.

"Was your purpose to only prove that you could create such a thing?"

"Of course not," 9S scoffed. "I want to play what you just did."

"An audacious desire." Nevertheless, he was intrigued. He left his cane by the wall and strolled around the android. "Allow me to help you on that path."

With quick and efficient touches, V adjusted 9S' posture, straightening his back and reaching behind his ears to tilt his head just so. He was faintly aware that 9S had stopped breathing, but he didn't give it too much thought. Alarming as it was to discover, he didn't actually need air to live.

He reached for the violin, but his fingers went right through it.

"Sorry," 9S peeped. "It's an android-only interface."

V hummed. If 9S was the only one who could move it, he would simply have to move 9S. He pressed his fingers through the gaps in 9S' gloves. Mere inches beneath his chin, 9S' shoulders drew up, shifting the instrument out of the right position. V tried to press him back into the place, but the android's body had coiled too tight for him to move.

He tilted his head down. "Uncomfortable?" 9S shook his head rapidly enough to send hair flying into his eyes. V noted that no other part of his body budged even an inch out of position. "You make a terrible liar when you're tense."

"It's fine!" 9S insisted, just a little too loud for it to be true. "I'm just not sure what you're doing."

"It's called…" His voice drifted away as he managed to get 9S' shoulders relaxed and set his attention back on his hands. "Tuning."

He guided 9S' movements and the position of his fingers, and a slow, gently warbling note answered. There would be no hope of taking 9S through anything too fast or too aggressive, so he allowed the long notes to melt one into the other with only the occasional hitching squeak, which could be expected given the vicarious play.

Basic scales kept them both occupied while V focused on a new problem. Being such a straightforward kind, he would undoubtedly pour the entirety of his being into the mastery of whatever song V guided him to. Winter was long enough; it would be unbearable if he chose any of the usual suspects. Staples of a beginner though they were, Ode to Joy had outstayed its welcome with him before he was seven, and he could perish of old age contented to never hear Twinkle Twinkle Little Star ever again.

An android could surely be trusted with something a little more complex.

He slowed both their hands to a stop before adjusting them to begin in the correct key, and guiding them through a series of serene notes. When a loop completed, he took them back to the start of it. The longer he listened, the more certain he was that he would not tire of them.

Beneath his hands, he soon felt 9S moving in tandem, and then slightly ahead of him, rushing to prove he already knew the motions.

V let go.

Deprived of the assist, 9S faltered, but with minimal self-consciousness, he was able to repeat the notes fully on his own. It didn't sound quite right to V, but it hadn't in his hands either. It had been a long time since he played that song.

_No,_ he thought._ It has been a long time since **Vergil** played that song._

In a way, V's hands were just as new to the touch of a violin as those of the boy before him. As much insight as memory granted him, and as much mastery when he relied on magic to fill the gap, his fingers had never graced the strings of a real violin. They were not the same shape as Vergil's. Not the same size. What little callousness there was to V's fingers came from the cane rather than the Yamato. Even his ears, with their non-identical curvatures, did not perceive key or tune in quite the same way.

Between Vergil's memory and V's own experience was a chasm that could not be crossed. What harmony of being they might have had was lost the moment when V decided that dying according to the former's wish was not to his taste.

"You are doing well."

Pride radiated from 9S' eyes, wide and bright beneath his disheveled hair. It must have been infectious, because V thought he felt a little of it as well.

* * *

_Addendum from Project Snow White: Underground Research Reports, Noted by YoRHa Unit 9S:_

_**10.2025 – 'The donor body Emil will be kept in storage as a fail-safe.'**_


	35. Echo of the Ancients

19 November 11945 4:47 AM

"THIS ACTION IS NOT WITHIN STANDARD SETTINGS AND CONSTITUTES TAMPERING WITH BASE MODEL DESIGN."

9S is too busy humming to pay Pod 153's concerns any mind. The changes he is making have no bearing on his combat ability or any of his most important functionalities. It's merely something he thought up that might make V feel a bit more at home.

Though he is made in humanity's image, 9S is still only an android. He thinks it must be lonely for V to not know when, or even if, he will ever see his family and friends again. It would explain why the rougher edges of his temperament are absent recently. V smiles more, and humors 9S with little things that don't serve any practical purpose. It tempts him to believe V might be even trying to have fun with him. A strange thought, but not one that he finds unwelcome.

There is change within 9S as well. His memory space is bright and well-organized; even the turbulent memories of Devola and Popola are in order to be neatly processed. His personality core is still in shambles, but it looks better than before. His mind seems full of s. Whether his perception is a result of his mood or the actual truth he doesn't know and doesn't dwell on.

It is much more pressing whether #EEB6B1 or #F5B6B6 is the right choice.

9S enters in the fore and his hum breaks apart into a satisfied chuckle. There is no reason for the adjustment not to work exactly as intended.

* * *

V paused and raised his head suspiciously. "Do you hear that?"

He braced himself. There was no way to not hear that unmistakable tune.

_"Beepity-dee-beepity-dee-beepity-Beep-Beep-BEEP BAAA~H!"_

9S whirled in time to see Emil's truck sail from a half-crumbled rooftop toward them. He shoved V off the road, sending him sprawling into a nearby bush, and opened fire with a laser blast that sent Emil careening off course to land on a partially re-constructed school bus that crumpled miserably under the impact. The truck flipped over twice before skidding to a near stop on the other side of the road.

"Owww-!" Emil spun around around to face them, and somehow hopped his truck in place. "Oh, hey 9S! I've been wondering where you got to!"

The turn of phrase was as comforting as it was worrying. Emil was probably the only person he'd met since the Tower fall who hadn't assumed his death, and he sounded unnervingly sure about it. "I could say the same of you."

"I was trapped!" Emil said with his usual bright blitheness. "There was a bunch of those white blocks in front of my elevator and I had to blast my way out. They were all over the place along all my routes, so I've been clearing them. Can't expect to get any customers if I'm not on the road! Did you need to buy something? I have a ton of meteorites!"

"Uhh, just a second." He trotted over to where V was indignantly righting himself and brushing debris out of his hair. "You okay?"

"So it would appear." The cane jabbed toward the grinning skeletal face. "What is that?"

"That's Emil."

V's expression blanked. "_That's_ him?"

"Kind of. It's…one of him. When the aliens came he copied himself a bunch and fought them and a lot of his memories were lost in the process. I'm a little close with this version of him. You mind if I do the talking?"

"On this we both desire the same answers." He waved his cane in a wide 'after you' arc. "I leave it to you."

Emil was humming along with persistent good cheer, seemingly oblivious to their serious whispers. 9S briefly thought it must have been nice to have no worries, but immediately shuddered with guilt. Emil was like that in the first place because he had forgotten most of his worries.

"Hey Emil, do you remember anything about a Gestalt Project?"

The humming stuttered, though the stone face remained grinning and unreadable. "I haven't heard those words in a long, long time. I'm sorry, but I don't think I remember what they mean. They just sort of make me sad."

"What about shades?'

"I think… Mm. There was something… Maybe the Original encountered them? But I've never seen any. They were probably gone a long time before the aliens showed up. "

"Anything you can remember would be helpful," 9S stressed, feeling a pang of sympathy for V. It really was jarring to try and have a complicated conversation with someone who had a non-responsive face. "Anything at all? Do you remember and Devola or Popola models? The red-haired ones."

"Oh them? Sure, there was a pair here a while ago, aren't they in the Resistance camp?" Before he could find words, Emil read his wilting reaction. "Oh… so they died…"

"Yeah," 9S said tightly. "I was hoping you might remember the old ones who were made when people were still around. We've been looking for information about the old world and we found something about you. Or I guess about the Original Emil. He was from that time too."

"Me?" Emil said brightly. "I-I'm no one at all I can't imagine why!"

"Do you recognize the name No.6 at all? It seems she was a weapon like you. I think her real name was Halua?"

9S thought he heard a gasp from the stone skeleton. "Oh…! _Halua…_ That name is very important. She was special. Someone he loved. Someone who was protecting him from the beginning."

"So the Original Emil was there," 9S whispered in a voice thick with awe. Even though V was beside him, he was an outsider and an anomaly. It was a different matter altogether to know that Emil was a living bridge to a time when the humans of this world had still been alive. "When there were real humans…"

Emil's head turned toward V. He remained silently grinning with only the gentle drone of his motor going for a long stretch. "I'm sorry, 9S; it really is all fuzzy. But here, if you're looking for relics, I have this old thing. I haven't had a chance to polish it up, so I won't charge you for it."

Out from the truck bed so cluttered it could have put even Jackass-tier disorganization to shame, a massive golden sword with a dragon's head pommel dislodged itself. The NFCS circuit engaged and in a swirl of heatless golden flecks, it vanished.

9S crossed his arms and ran a quick scan of what he was dealing with. _Let's see… 'Fool's Lament'? Geez, who even names these things? Used by a guy who tried to save the world, huh. Memoir 2003? Wasn't that the same year as…_

"V, look!" He nimbly flicked open a display. "There's data about the 6/12 incident on here."

V closed in and peered over his shoulder, mumbling along as he read through the data. "Hm. Nothing we don't already know. Why would such a thing be hidden inside of a sword?"

"NFCS-compatible objects usually have a data storage component." Someone somewhere had gotten their hands on this weapon long before Emil. It probably came from a time long before androids were actively archiving human history. "There are three more entries, but they're behind a very specific kind of barrier."

"One you can't hack?"

"One that's too simple for me to hack." He materialized the sword in his hands. The weapon interface didn't feel any different; it was just as heavy and unwieldy as the other greatswords in his arsenal. "Remember, I came along at the end of five thousand years of model upgrades. I'm built to hack just about anything made in the last two or three hundred of those. This system is way older than that—the NFCS just taps into it. It's probably as old as maso itself."

"So how do you get the rest?"

"Memory alloy," Emil volunteered. "Certain materials alter NFCS access levels. As long as you meet the parameters you'll get in, but no matter what you're gonna need lots of memory alloy to get to the most restricted stuff!"

9S sucked his lips slowly between his teeth and faintly gnawed them. "Are you ever going to explain why you're so knowledgeable about YoRHa functionality?"

"A good salesman knows his customer's needs!"

He sighed and let the weapon dissipate. What had he even been hoping for? "Right, right… You wouldn't happen to have any of that alloy for sale would you?"

"Only a little. Memory alloy is really hard to find these days. It's really strange, actually! It seemed like it was all over the place right before the tower fell."

"I'll buy all you have. And I'd like for you to have a copy of the reports we found."

"Oh, I couldn't—"

"Emil," 9S said gently. "Even if you're not the original, you're still you. This might be the only thing left of Halua in this world."

"Mm… That's not quite right. I feel like she's somewhere really close by even now… But thanks, 9S." A dozen pieces of gleaming white alloy scraped their way free of Emil's cargo, followed closely by two additional weapons—a short sword and a spear that also bore the gold-plated dragon motif. "Since you're buying my entire memory alloy stock, I'll let you have these too. And I'll keep an eye out for any more like them!"

He let the NFCS process it all in a shower of light flecks. "You're gonna go out of business if you go around handing out relics for free like that, you know."

Emil laughed. "Don't be shy! You've given me plenty." He crept in close, tilting dangerously on his front wheel to bring his face closer to 9S. "And you need all the help you can get if you actually found a human to protect."

9S' temperature spiked, and he felt V tense behind him. "He's not a human!"

Emil's head spun clockwise until it was disconcertingly upside down. "Really? I can't get a read on him at all and he looks pretty organic aside from those things on his arms." Quite suddenly, he righted himself. "Oh! Are you also a weapon?"

"In a manner of speaking," V said with an audible smile.

"Aw, that's so unfair. I wish I got to be so handsome! Although I'd settle for just a good body too; I've had hundreds but they always end up falling apart on me. Ah well! Nice to meet you, V! You guys come visit me sometime!"

9S watched him mosey off, feeling strangely exhausted. Emil really was something.

"Handsome, hm…"

He grinned mischievously. "Maybe you're his type. He never called _me_ handsome." His smile faltered; V was squinting at him. "What?"

"What's wrong with your face?"

9S rushed to materialize one of his larger, more polished weapons. Seeing his reflection, three things immediately became apparent to him: First, his mod had worked; second, he had neglected to specify an area of effect and the default was apparently hard-edged, asymmetrical splotches of bright color; and third, #EEB6B1 was an awful and unnatural shade of pink on him.

"Are you…" V asked in a wavering, poorly controlled voice. "Did you program yourself to blush?"

His temperature spiked again, and the color came in even brighter and gaudier than before. He thought furiously of some way to explain that wasn't a mortifying and transparent attempt to save face, but he soon gave it up.

V was already trembling with soundless laughter.

* * *

_The three weapons obtained from Emil contain data regarding Old World Events. Summary follows:_

_**Fool's Lament:** A collection of four memoirs detailing the battle between the red dragon and the giant white humanoid weapon. Source unknown. Refinement priority: Low. _

_**Fool's Embrace**: A record of thoughts believed to be from the 'Red Dragon'. It seems to pre-date any events that took place during the 6/12 incident. Refinement priority: Medium. _

_**Fool's Accord:** A long-form record of a prince believed to be the partner of the 'Red Dragon'. Despite limited pertinent information, Subject V has designated this weapon first in priority._


	36. Changing Thought

**Day 70**

V had a lot of questions about the blacksmith machine Masamune, but all he knew was that he lived somewhere in the castle and was capable of working on the golden weapons Emil had provided. 9S' first attempt to contact him yielded nothing. All the ways he knew to the throne room were gone and hunting for new ones meant long, slow hours finding paths that weren't dangerously unstable.

While 9S hunted for a new route, V went on a different errand.

The heat was every bit as abominable he expected it to be in a desert that baked beneath eternal sunlight, but he'd have been lying if he said he wasn't partially there for the chance to get out of the coat for a while.

It helped that the desert was full of interesting things.

The machines there all wore masks, apparently in imitation of a unique culture of replicants that had once occupied the area. Pod 042 read out the reports on a related archeological effort that 9S had aided while he surfed between piles of discarded towerfall on Shadow's back. It had been called Façade, the people lived by thousands upon thousands of rules, and the spear that 9S favored was a royal relic they left behind. The data in the storage component was related to a succession conflict; nothing V cared for.

In the shade of an outcrop, he pushed sweat-slicked hair from his facet back into the hood of his cloak. In the distance, a cloud of sand so thick it seemed like a solid object whirred on the horizon. Somewhere beyond it was the oasis. Humbling as it was to imagine 9S crossing so much every day just to get water, it was also more proof of his harrowing lack of self-preservation.

Further north, vague dome-like shapes danced in the shimmer rising from the sand. Before he could wonder if they were a mirage, Shadow curled up from beneath his feet and licked at his face.

"I'm alright," he assured the disembodied mouth. "Keep going."

To make use of things that were advantageous to him was in V's nature. An inheritance from Vergil, yes, but also a practical adaptation to being cast out into a body too weak to defend itself. For the same reasons, it was also in V's nature to rarely be satisfied. Two months into this unexpected post-apocalyptic vacation and he still had his heart set on a hot bath.

Mammoth apartments lay on the border between the forest kingdom and the desert, as mentioned in pod's archives. Surely in an entire complex there had to be at least one intact basin somewhere?

His hopes dwindled the moment he stepped inside of one. Apartments were simple and identical by design, so he hadn't picked up on it from the decrepit exteriors, but the insides were blank utilitarian spaces just like the office buildings. Machines and their rebuilding efforts had been there.

They were still there in fact.

V took a moment to watch them from a shaded window. A handful of the smallest machine types were scattered around the remains of a playground. One was holding a doll's head and pretending to comb hair that it no longer had. Two more were chasing each other in circles with a never-ending echo of stilted 'ha-ha-ha's. Another three were making shapes inside the confines of a sandbox. Strictly inside the sandbox, where they barely fit. Even though sand was literally everywhere else for miles.

Watching them, he understood how 9S could be so stubborn in his beliefs about machines. To someone who only ever had to think of them as enemies, their choices must have seemed random and mindless. Imitation for imitation's sake. To V, who had no special animosity one way or the other, their behaviors weren't all that different from actual children playing a mildly unsettling game of pretend. The Red Girls had prevented them ever making it too far past that stage.

Without them in the picture, that was liable to change.

Another group of machines congregated peacefully on the edge of the playground. He couldn't fully hear their conversation, but he heard snatches about weather and husbands and children and house chores that they couldn't possibly have.

"You think they know they're imitatin' a bunch of gossipy hens?" asked Griffon.

One of them turned to look at them. It had an eye-patch, and a large pink ribbon.

"Peeping Tom."

Griffon spread his wings and electricity coiled around his pinions. "Nobody up here is interested in your nuts and bolts! Beat it!"

V rolled his eyes and pulled away from the window, chased by a chorus of indignant cries that rose from the sand.

* * *

**Day 75**

When it came down to it, V could have taken care of himself without assistance. Getting food, water, clothing, and information was nothing 'he' hadn't done before. All 9S provided was some streamlining on the necessities and a way to get the rest without having to take it by force. Which was why he rarely held in his critiques when his opinion was solicited. Especially about data. 9S was so immodest about his abilities as a scanner that V couldn't help but goad him.

But V never criticized the mattress.

It had been acquired without request and he hadn't expected such an amenity any more than he'd expected Nico to abstain from smoking inside the van. So he'd quietly accepted that it was stiff and utilitarian and would have been at home in a jailhouse. If asked, he told the truth: It was an improvement from sleeping on concrete.

If only the necessity of sleeping fully clothed hadn't diminished those gains. Awakening every day was an assault of physical discomfort spearheaded by intense thirst, and today was no different.

Except that 9S wasn't nearby. Strange. He didn't like to leave while V was sleeping.

He's up on the next floor, Griffon rumbled drowsily. Said to just come get him if you need him.

"Is that so," V said as he reached out to Pod 042 for water. "I wasn't aware the two of you had grown close enough to chat while I slept."

Griffon materialized at the edge of the mattress with his feathers in a raised pillow around his neck. "Not exactly a choice I got to make for myself. You got no idea what a huge pain in the ass he was after you went and got your guts brined."

The turn of phrase was almost as revolting as dried stickiness on V's skin. He dropped his hood and yanked the coat open. Heat rose in cloudy puffs and though the temperature quickly chilled him, it was worth it just to feel air passing through the cotton resistance shirt to reach his body. He tossed his gloves aside to give his hands the same treatment and flexed his fingers.

A screech from above perked his head up. Though it was unexpected, it was a familiar and telltale sound: a violin. V hadn't heard or seen 9S practice since he first made the program. He had assumed that it was just a passing fancy the scanner had since lost interest in.

So he practiced when V was sleeping…

He gave a faint twitch of a smile. Vergil had liked to practice alone too. Anything he played in front of others, particularly if it was for his mother, had to be absolutely perfect. That and Dante was unbearable about letting him practice anything that didn't involve them fighting.

Griffon nudged against his hand. The ridged bone was a peculiar but welcome change of texture. "You alright, V? You been talkin' a lot of walks on memory lane lately." He shuffled his wings and leered, as if he couldn't quite manage the task of being honest without cracking a joke. "You getting homesick?

Shrugging, V climbed to his feet. "I have done nothing but dig into the past since I arrived. It isn't so strange if my past rises to the surface in response."

Griffon answered with an unconvinced snort.

* * *

**Day 77**

V paced in a pool of sunlight with Pod 042 drifting behind him, his eyes flinty beneath drawn brows. The cane flashed as it spun over and over in his hands. Fool's Accord did not hold any secrets or a key to returning to where he belonged. He had never expected it to; that would have been too easy. But the lack of pertinent information was not important. It was a record of a human from another dimension, the only one known to make such a crossing aside from himself.

"FINAL RECORD FOLLOWS:

THIS IS THE STORY OF A MAD PRINCE. A STORY FROM LONG AGO ABOUT AN ENCOUNTER WITH A DRAGON. IN FRONT OF THE PRINCE WAS A HEAVILY INJURED RED DRAGON. THE PRINCE WISHED TO KILL IT. EVEN THOUGH THE DRAGON WASN'T BLACK IN COLOR, THEIR SPECIES WAS STILL RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS PARENTS' DEATH.

THE DRAGON SPOKE AS THE PRINCE RAISED HIS SWORD. "I WILL LET YOU LIVE. WE WILL EXCHANGE OUR SOULS, AND I WILL GIVE YOU POWER." THE PRINCE THOUGHT ABOUT IT LONG AND HARD, AND DECIDED TO ENTER INTO A PACT WITH THE DRAGON.

IT DIDN'T MATTER WHAT HE'D LOSE, IT DIDN'T MATTER IF IT IS A DRAGON, NOTHING ELSE MATTERED AS LONG AS HE COULD WIELD HIS BLADE OF VENGEANCE. THE ONLY THING IN THE PRINCE'S HEART WAS A PITCH BLACK DESIRE.

END RECORD."

Beneath the window, 9S held the spear up to the light. The shape of the red dragon's head glittered in gold relief on the edge of the handle.

V stopped and traced a finger over the pointed horns. "What of Fool's Embrace?"

"Not ready yet," 9S answered. "What's got your attention?"

V could have thrown a dart at any line of the record. From start to finish there were uncomfortable similarities, but he couldn't be asked to believe that mere temperament allowed one to cross dimensions. Even Vergil needed the Yamato to accomplish that, and it was not a tool that could be wielded by a mere human. The prince had begun his life as such. Whether or not he still was after exchanging souls with a dragon, on the other hand, was questionable.

He leaned heavily on his cane, his fingers drumming restlessly against the metal. "This prince and dragon must have come from a place where maso already existed. But dragons seemed a more pressing issue than salt."

9S crossed his legs and the spear quietly re-materialized on his back. "Maybe magic offers some kind of resistance to white chlorination?"

"Or it didn't happen there at all. Pacts were not only a tool of the gods, it seems."

"Are you thinking pacts have something to do with why you both were able to cross dimensions?" V stared at him, honestly caught off guard. "What? The contract sounds like that same thing. And it's kind of unreasonable to think it's just a coincidence that you and this guy have that in common, right?"

V hummed. He was not convinced the contract was the same thing—his life was not at stake if anything happened to any of the three demons. They drew on his magic to stay alive, and in exchange they were his to use. Pacts struck him as something very different. Something more permanent with a lot more at stake.

"The place where I met the gods… Physically, it was the church. But for me it happened somewhere on the edge of my being and the start of theirs. A place like a dream. My concern is that it wasn't the pact or the prince or his dragon that opened the way to this world. All of our records say the giant appeared first. The prince and the dragon followed after it."

9S was watching him expectantly. He heaved a sigh. "There is not enough information to build a worthy conclusion on and the workings of that world may make little difference in this one. But even if the pact is involved, I don't believe my contracts count. Just as the bells haven't called to me a second time, a soul is not something to be bartered twice."

Though he dismissed it, something nagged V still.

While thy branches mix with mine and our roots together join…

He was meant to be one half of a whole being. But he was human enough for the gods. Whole enough to give his soul. Perhaps the nature of his extended existence was more than just a matter of maso in the atmosphere and bore more thought than he had given it.

* * *

**Day 84**

The ruins had finally grown too cold and the towerfall too dangerously chilling. He had to leave for better shelter.

The new site was not as terrible as V had expected. Nestled safely in some back alley on the far northern edge of the amusement park, the voices of the machines were absent and the fireworks were just distant, almost comforting booms—little different from gentle thunder.

The interior was small. Faded wallpaper flaked over barren, crumbling plaster gone yellow with age. The floor was covered in a thick crust of dirt where too many generations of dust had settled and matured. Cushions too ancient to display the full glory of their gauche designs clung to couches and chairs whose legs had rotted from beneath them, leaving them hobbled and listing.

Griffon flapped busily, seemingly unaware that the grit that kept settling on him was ancient webbing turning to dust as he disturbed the air.

"What a dump."

"A dump with an intact window," said V, trailing his fingers over a blank painting hung in a grimy frame. "And human details. This place has been preserved."

"AFFIRMATIVE," said Pod 042. "DUE TO MINIMAL TACTICAL BENEFIT, HERITAGE CONSERVATION EFFORTS IN AREAS KNOWN FOR HUMAN RECREATIONAL ACTIVITY OFTEN PROCEED SMOOTHLY."

"That's great but V can't live in this museum exhibit, it's disgustin'!"

V plucked a spider from Griffon's beak. "I seem to recall you threw me in a pile of garbage when we first met."

"Well yeah, but you didn't have to live there."

The window opened without shattering at V's touch—a good start. The whole room creaked in protest, but only the dust fell. The clatter, when it came, was from outside.

9S jogged in, brushing his hands off on his shorts. "How is it? I found some old fabric we can clean with."

"A decayed mess," V said unreserved. "But more intact than I expected. It can be made livable."

House cleaning was not something he expected or wanted to deal with, but for the semblance of an actual living space, he intended to treat it more like a necessary decontamination.

9S surprised him by having a sensible grip on the process. With a little of Shadow's assistance, he got all of the deteriorated furniture out and pulled the rotted shelves from the walls and was careful to direct their efforts from the ceiling down.

"I admit," V huffed, his muscles vibrating unpleasantly with the efforts of scrubbing. "I did not think you a tidy sort."

9S leaned his chin on the handle of his broom. "I'm not, I guess. But it's not too different from having a bath." He caught the mildly confused look on V's face and rolled his eyes. "The nanomachines that take care of any superficial damage I take technically also keep me clean, but I like baths. Didn't humans just take baths because they felt good sometimes?"

"More often than merely 'sometimes' if we were afforded the luxury."

His mind filled with a faint scent of soap and masses of bubbles and endless splashing. He could not recall himself or Dante at that age, but the little odds and ends of sensory detail lingered. Maybe imagined, maybe not.

"Memory, hither come, and tune your merry notes…"

"That's poetry, right?" 9S stood up straight, his expression brightening. "You recite when you're fighting too; are they incantations? Like with the pod programs?"

"Incantations…" V mouthed with a smirk. "I don't use those. Poetry merely assists my focus."

"I did a lot of reading on it, but I don't think I get it what it's supposed to be."

"You are rich in imagination, but many years removed from humanity's symbols. You may not understand it as easily as music."

"Not like humans understood it either…" 9S grumbled. "I can't even get a read on whether it's supposed to rhyme or not."

"If I may disillusion you, humans were never very good at agreeing on hard parameters to abstractions."

9S' expression dimmed, but only for a moment. "Do you have a favorite kind?"

"There are too many to love only a few. However, I did favor a particular weaver of words when I was a boy." He sat on the windowsill. "And, when night comes, I'll go, to places fit for woe; Walking along the darkened valley, with silent melancholy."

9S tilted his head. "That's… kind of sad."

"Have I impressed you as a happy man?"

He'd meant it to be smug, and perhaps a little tongue-in-cheek. Instead the bluntness of the words was tempered by how mildly he spoke them, and it was that tone that seemed to catch the both of them off guard.

"It's not that I thought you were happy," 9S mumbled. "I just never thought you might be…"

9S' expression went distant and closed as he retreated into whatever corner of his mind he took refuge in at times like these. V was content to follow his example and put the subject and the discussion far from his mind.

* * *

_Report:_

_Fool's Embrace yielded no clarification of existing queries. There is some mention of a curse involving the dragon, but the nature of this curse and whether it had any bearing on the dimension crossing is unknown. _

_Fool's Lament has been deemed not of interest as data on 6/12 is abundant. _

_Note: Unit 9S will follow up with Emil regarding where the items were discovered and conduct an investigation. Among Unit 9S' existing weapons catalog, personal data on subject 'Yonah' was identified from 'Iron Pipe'. Her thoughts in relation to her father were found, but it in unclear what relation they have to the weapon. _

_Hypothesis [based on unlikely density of artifacts]: Events related to the Gestalt Project's inception and eventual failure may have taken place in this region. _

_**Unit 9S and Pod 153 will begin a wide area scan operation for additional data.**_


	37. Secret Garden

"You sure you're gonna be okay?"

"Yes."

"There are no transporters out there so just call and I'll come back as fast as I can."

"I know."

"If they build any more of those weird machines, will you please not engage them alone?"

"If that will stop you fretting over me like I'm a freshly hatched chick," said V, in a testy deadpan. "I've survived far longer than you will be gone with far fewer assets at my disposal. Your fussing accomplishes little."

9S wilted. It was one thing to leave for a few hours at a time to go to gather supplies. The main sector only maybe 50km from end to end. With his highest quality speed modifying chips, there was nowhere he could possibly go where he couldn't get to V within the hour. This was different. If he was going to scan effectively, he had to approach it like a mission and spend an extended period in the field.

In this case, the field was the no man's land to the southwest. Proper scans would take at least a week if he didn't find anything, and who knew how much more than that if he did, and he was looking at being anywhere from seven to ten hours away at the edge of the agreed upon perimeters. That was a lot of time for a lot of things to go wrong. YoRHa's final sortie was underway at midnight and before 6 AM, the bunker had fallen, the tower had risen, and 2B was dead.

9S trusted himself, and he even trusted V; it was everything else that he didn't have any faith in.

He couldn't even rely on the weather.

"REPORT: INCLEMENT CONDITIONS LIKELY TO CONTINUE FOR 2-3 HOURS."

9S frowned at the churning clouds in the distance from the safety of the forest's edge. Snow would have been doable, but driving sleet was no condition to push V through. Not even with the promise of a warm room at the end. The risk of humans becoming ill if exposed to cold, wet conditions was high and he'd never be able to focus on scanning if he was worrying about that.

Water sloshed at his side as he slouched his weight onto one foot. "Maybe I can find something to keep you dry…"

V shot him a confused look. "Or we could find something to occupy our time until it lets up."

"Really?" He looked back at the forest kingdom, his lips pressing into a line at the prospect of aimless backtracking. "Maybe we can look for new foods? There's supposed to be onions around."

"And you never took any before?"

"I didn't want to risk it." He reached into his smaller pack for Anthurium's field notes. "Meat is meat, but if I got a plant wrong it might poison you."

"Nothing looks and smells like an onion but an onion," V said sourly, with a slight wrinkle of his nose.

9S hid his grin in the book's pages. "You were a picky eater as a kid, weren't you, V?"

Above them, Griffon sneered. "He's still a picky eater. And so sensitive to every little thing that offends his delicate senses. You can't help being prissy, can you?"

"Just because civilization has been dead for ten thousand years doesn't mean I intend to stew in my own filth."

9S bit back a laugh. That really didn't help V's case, but he was quietly glad that androids didn't really produce unpleasant odors.

"How about we go see if the oranges are ready then? Come on, it'll be a good time killer."

Time-killer, yes; 'good' was up for debate. The knight machines were annoyingly active now that the humidity in the zone was down, and fighting them was the last thing he wanted to do with fresh supplies in his bag. It was supposed to be such a simple plan today: do one last supply run, drop the big pack off, and make his way to the designated area. If not for the sleet he could have already been gone. There weren't even any chips or interfaces he could have used to avoid the issue. Accounting for local weather conditions had always been the task of operators.

V lost patience for avoiding the machines well before they made it through the middle of the zone. In the end, they took the most direct path, and Griffon dealt with any threats that came their way.

As they pressed northwest, it grew steadily warmer with their proximity to the desert. The canopy thinned. The peaks and valleys and rocky formations flattened to open land. A strong herbal scent filled the air. Unlike the barren badlands outside of the city ruins, trees covered in yellow flowers pocked the distance between edge of the forest and the distant orange grove. Gigantism had seemingly skipped the area. The treetops were high, but probably within reach of a solid jump.

V's shuffling rhythm suddenly fell away from beside him. He was staring off into the trees with a puzzled scowl.

"Who planted these?"

9S glanced up at the twisting branches and shrugged. "Aren't they wild?"

"There are signs of neglect…" He stepped backward and thumbed a branch of shrub only a little taller than he was. "But trees don't naturally grow in orderly rows."

The rows were hardly orderly, but 9S could see what V meant. The biggest and presumably oldest of the trees had generous and deliberate spacing to them that was only partly masked by tall grasses and rising saplings.

If they were lunar tears, he might have suspected Emil. The resistance camp had its little patchy garden, but he doubted any resistance member would have dedicated this much time to planting trees this far out in the middle of nowhere. That left machines. There were none around but planting trees on the edge of a forest was exactly the kind of redundant thing a machine trying to replicate humans would do.

"Pod, run a scan. If there's anything out here that isn't flora, I want it on my map." Pod 153's antennae flashed, and the scan spread, bringing little odds and ends into focus, but only a single new thing appeared. It wasn't moving. "That. What is that?"

"REPORT: COMPOSITION MATCH FOR MACHINE LIFEFORM. NO ENEMY SIGNAL DETECTED."

"So it's dead already… That would explain the neglect I guess."

"You intend to investigate?"

9S was already meandering off in the direction of the marker. "Hm? Yeah. I'm trying to get back in the habit. Nothing's worse than doing a wide area scan twice, so even when I think it's probably nothing, I should treat it like it's something."

The dead machine was only sort of something. Just a basic stubby that wouldn't have been even the slightest threat even if it had still been functional. It was propped up against the short trunk of a particularly shrubby, gnarly looking tree. A straw hat with a bundle of dried out white flowers sat in its lap, clenched between its pincers so it wouldn't blow away.

9S began the scan and took a deep breath. He was sure he wasn't going to like this very much.

* * *

_11915.02_  
_It has been 4.734 years since I encountered an android. I experienced a strange lock up in my processing. If I fought him, the trees would have been harmed, but if I allowed myself to be destroyed, there would be no one to care for them. But the android did not attack me. He said I must be broken and left me alive._

_11915.09_  
_The android brought a plant to me. He said that humans once ate them and asked if I knew anything of them. He brought me many more plants to ask the same. I knew none of them. But perhaps I can learn._

_11916.05_  
_The trees in the distance never interested me. But the android brought a twig with bright orange fruits hanging from it. He was interested in ingesting them. It is possible that he is the one who is broken. I will have to collect data so that he does not harm himself._

_11916.11_  
_The android obtained animal flesh and attempted the heating process called 'cooking'. The result was a black mass composed of carbon. Apparently, this constitutes failure. He claims he will try again. He wants to know everything about the process._  
_I feel somewhat excited. Like I am watching a new tree grow._

_11917.07_  
_I have received a hat made of dried plant matter. The android claims that human gardeners wore them to protect them from the sun. The weather does not concern me. But I am a gardener. I will wear the hat._

_11918.01_  
_The trees in my garden are called 'witch hazel'._  
_I did not know this until the android addressed me by their name._  
_'I' am a gardener, 'I' wear a gardener's hat, 'I' grow witch hazel, 'I' am Witch Hazel._

_11918.01.2_  
_He has never seen the flower for which he is named._

_I19o8.03_  
_I do not think I w1ll make it back._

_1111!1aDWF99_  
_1-METHYL-4-(PROP-1-EN-2-YL)CYCLOHEX-1-ENE—3,7-DIMETHYLOCTA-2,6-DIENAL—_

* * *

9S stared at the compound and silently sifted through records for matches, vaguely hoping that it was something of interest even though he knew well before the results come back that it wouldn't be. Yet another machine's memories taking up space inside of him... He had been preparing himself for this ever since they decided he would be scanning again, but to think he hadn't even made it out of the region before it happened.

V reached over him and took the book. Each turn of the page was whisper quiet, but seemed like the only sound in the world and 9S was glad to interrupt it with his scan results.

"Limonine and citrol."

"Pardon?"

"Chemical compounds related to oranges," he said. "That's what all that gibberish at the end was. It must have died in the grove after…" His chest tightened. Anthurium had said right to his face he wasn't good with plants, yet he'd had a book full of meticulous notes without a single flaw. Written by a machine that killed itself to find him a single stupid flower he didn't even need. "After whatever happened."

The book closed with a gentle slap, and V moved on ahead of him with the same idle, swaying gait as ever.

"Shouldn't we leave?" asked 9S. "This is a grave, right?"

"Should we leave the sea because the twins are buried there?" Without looking back, V lifted the cane and twitched it forward for 9S to follow. "Leave the gardener where he rests. Anthurium would not have given you this if he wasn't at peace with you being here."

It didn't feel like peace. It felt like Anthurium had tossed away something important. Was he just in the habit of showing kindness to beings he was within his right to hate?

He shuddered the thought away before it could take hold of him and followed V into the grove. The oranges looked more vibrant than before, but all the flowers were gone.

"The notes never did say anything about how to know if these are ripe..."

V reached the cane out and shook a low, heavy bough. A brief shower of oranges rained down, and he only had to hold out his hand for one to fall readily into it while the rest pattered and rolled through the grass.

9S couldn't help staring as he peeled it and separated out a translucent segment. "How is—"

As soon as he opened his mouth, V pushed it between his teeth. He bit down on instinct, and his senses flooded. Innumerable pips of smooth pulp slipping against his tongue, the thin membranes popping all at once with less resistance than bubbles. A gushing tide of acids and sugars, tart enough to wrinkle his nose but so light and sweet that his tongue had no choice but to forgive it.

He looked at the other oranges scattered along the ground and licked at his lips. "Do they all taste like that…?"

"Probably not, but there's nothing to say you can't go looking."

He picked one up, his gloomier thoughts all but forgotten as his head filled with the bright, invigorating scent. "I shouldn't. This is food. You might need it."

In an advanced maneuver of expression 9S felt a dozen years from cracking on a technical level, V combined a condescending roll of his eyes with a smirk and still managed to convey a sort of amused long-suffering.

"I could eat nothing else all winter and still not finish all of this before they rot." He tossed his peel aside, and wandered deeper, plucking another orange from another tree with no evidence of preference or rationale. "Do what you wish."

9S was nearly done peeling before V had finished his sentence. The second orange was as fascinating as the first. The balance of sugar to acid was completely different, the bite a little stronger. Soft crunches joined the texture as his teeth found seeds. He learned quickly that they were bitter and unpleasant and to spit them out well before he noted V doing the same.

He scampered through the lukewarm grove, always keeping V at the center of his erratic orbit. The trees pocked the short grasses without order, as scattered as the occasional piece of towerfall. The oranges hung so low that 9S had to bend to reach the lowest ones, and the highest were rarely out of reach of V's cane.

Each one was a surprise to open and bite into and he ate them all, even the ones that were too tart, too sweet, too mushy, too watery, or too dry. Ripeness stopped being important after his first five. It only mattered that they were new, that even the bad ones were just a temporary discomfort that could be easily wiped out by grabbing another and another and another until he found one of the perfect ones that without fail sent his senses soaring with what it meant for a thing to taste good. To eat something delicious felt good. It was so oddly addictive, how it didn't matter how many he ate because there were too many to count, how each new one seemed to make him happier—

He stopped mid-bite.

Juice spilled down his chin and dripped onto his sleeves. He'd felt something similar to nausea before, but never with any matter taking up space in his body. The scent of oranges was everywhere, and a single moment was all it took for it to become a choking, eye-watering stench that didn't go away even when he dropped the orange and stopped breathing.

Something heavy dropped over his head, blotting out the light, the grove, and the clinging residues of limonine and citrol.

"Your appetite is impressive," said V. "But it seems you've found your limit."

9S said the first words that came to his mind. "Sorry."

"Unless you intend to introduce me to what it looks like when an android purges nineteen oranges all at once, you have nothing to apologize to me for."

Was that a joke? He laughed, more at the concept than the execution. The scent of oranges vanished, exchanged for sweat, oils, mint, and the faint animal musk that lingered in the fur lining. The tension in his midsection eased. He could have eaten more, but he no longer wanted more. He no longer wanted anything.

Despite his full stomach, he felt hollow. When the wind blew, it seemed to pass through him as though he were just as empty as the discarded peels.

"Am I a machine, V…?"

A slight shuffle in the grass answered before V's voice followed. "Why do you ask?"

"I met a lot of machines like that one. Some more advanced, some not. I hacked into most of them. I knew what they thought. How they thought. I'd always find the same things in machines that lost or couldn't obtain what they chose to live for. This urge to…" Another wave of nausea welled up. These were Adam's words and they were caustic in his chest, but there was no way around how accurate they were, and the shame of it felt real enough to disembowel him and release every sweet thing he'd stuffed himself with. "To destroy everything. And to be destroyed."

V offered silence yet again, and 9S clutched the coat close around him. "I thought it was so irrational but I did all the same things. The framework of my being is the same. Everything I ever thought or felt is contained inside a bunch of machine cores bound in a self-destruct protocol. I'm shaped like an android, but I've already met machines who imitated the human form. Am I... really any different?"

"Of course. You're YoRHa."

It was so dismissive that 9S could have kicked him in the shins on principle, if not for the way V's hand settled casually atop the coat, freezing him in place. "If you were only a machine or only an android, you wouldn't be here. You would do well to embrace all that your existence entails."

"To what end? Everyone I cared about is dead, there's no one for me to fight, nowhere for me to return to, and I'm still here! Doing pointless things like eating and programming violins…!"

"That's progress." 9S whipped the coat from over his head, but V's expression was as far from sarcastic as it could possibly be. "If you are built to be human, it's natural that you inherited the ability to subsist on pointless things when offered little else. 'Emotions are prohibited' has served your development in this regard about as well as N2's meddling with the machines."

Okay, granted he had just questioned whether he was a machine, that was too audacious even for V. "I'm the most developed android there is!"

"And a child who cannot see the depths of his own sorrows." V took the coat from him and tossed it into the grass. "I was the same. For a long, long time. And so my miseries increased. I could have… My life could have been different. It could have been better."

9S clenched his fist against his stomach. 'Better' was a premonition of hope too hard to swallow and impossible to digest. It wasn't just that 2B was gone, it was everyone. The D unit that had been at the oasis was gone. Those strung out B units at the oil field had succumbed to a combination of side effects and maintenance failure. He had searched high and low for 4S in the castle until his joints ached and his body was coated in dust and grime and Pod 153 began to warn of stress-related failures in his motor control. Nothing. The only other scanner he knew and he had vanished without so much as a stray signal. The tower fall had probably killed him and buried him, and hoping he was at rest beneath that uncertain grave was the best 9S could do for him.

Only he had survived, and that was so much more like punishment than providence. He wasn't so wrapped up in himself that he would genuinely compare their losses, but V did have something at the moment of his mother's death that 9S didn't anymore: someone to share his fate with. A brother.

He might have said as much, if V wasn't already sprawled out on top of his coat, peacefully dozing like he didn't have a care in the world.

It was probably for the best. For once, a little solitude to think about things on his own might be for the best.

* * *

_From Project Gestalt Reports recovered by YoRHa Unit 9S:_

_**Black scrawl** – Believed to be a virus by then-sentient replicants, the scrawl was a malfunction of the replicant's body—a DNA-level breakdown caused by the relapse of the corresponding gestalt. A fully relapsed Gestalt prevented the recreation of the replicant, as the data source was functionally corrupt. _

_**Relapse** \- the catastrophic loss of sentience seen in certain Gestalts. …With some relapsed Gestalts beginning to attack Replicants, there is an urgent need to take comprehensive action. Note: Overseer 22 [a Devola model] was convinced that an unknown technological defect in the Gestalt transformation process was responsible for relapse._


	38. Bird About Town

"Rare of you to leave a contact request."

"Well, you were so cranky when I woke you up last time…"

V cracked a smile. "You have something to discuss, then."

"There's a structure I'd like to investigate on the other side of the bay. Seems like it used to be an extension of the factory, but the machines abandoned it when they couldn't re-establish the bridge."

"Sounds serious. You expect it to be worth it?"

"Could be. You've received the rest of the data right? Signal is kind of spotty out here."

"I have."

"Great. The factory area is likely to be dangerous so I'm coming in to run maintenance and fully prepare before heading that far out. I should be back in the area in the next few hours."

"I'll be waiting."

Griffon yawned as raucously as possible. So the prodigal boy-bot was returning to the roost. Couldn't happen soon enough as far he was concerned. Much of a sad sack as he was, his company was a cheap price to pay to not have to cater to his majesty's every whim.

V glanced back at him. They couldn't actually read one another's minds—contract didn't work like that—but he always seemed to know when Griffon was thinking something that would have annoyed him if spoken out loud.

"Perhaps you should get some exercise. You've been getting fat."

"I'm a nightmare, ya ninny, I don't gain weight any more than you do."

He tilted his head and faintly clicked his jaws. Actually, V was looking kind of different. Not exactly any less of a string bean, but something was changing. He'd thought it was the coat at first. Properly fitting clothes went a long way to making him look like proper devil hunter. But these days even when he wasn't in the coat, he looked the way had Griffon felt since resurrecting. Energetic and pulsing with magic to spare. Less corpse-y, for sure.

Whatever. Griffon wasn't getting fat, but what he was getting was fuckin' bored. Even tryin' to find the alloy the kid needed to do all his weapon data nonsense was such a pain in the ass it was barely even worth the effort. They'd spent hours one day trying to turn that shit up and fun as it was making scrap metal out of any machines that wanted a piece of them, it sort of soured the mood to find so much nothing.

"Maybe I'll take you up on that after all," he said, stretching his wings and bobbing toward the window. "Hey, kitty! You comin' with?"

Shadow rumbled something appallingly lazy from where she lay sprawled out on V's mattress, and he scoffed. "And you call yourself a demon. Fine fine, I guess somebody's gotta look out for the boss man, keep him safe from all these peaceful clowns."

Avoiding the occasional burst of fireworks, he wheeled out west toward the forest.

There was a scorched spot in the canopy, and he could just make out a few intact metal huts connected by metal bridges and ladders, like the weirdest tree fort ever. A handful of the shrimpiest kind of machine were milling around with one big coppery one that looked specialty. Didn't have the wind-up toy look to it.

Griffon passed it right on by. If memory served, that was where the kid said the peaceful machine village was, and there was nothing he could imagine that was more boring.

Now the castle, that was more his speed. They avoided that side of the river like the salty plague it was, but there were machines hanging around the place that actually looked like they'd be a challenge. Right at the gate were two of the huge, barrel-shaped ones they'd only ever seen once or twice deep down in the cavern, and they were both tricked out with glowing electric spikes on their arms and legs. He landed on a window above and shot one just for the hell of it. It did its whole red-eyed attack mode shtick, but he sat just as smug as could be. In this section of town, the machines didn't use any gun tech, so all it could do was stare up up him and look pissed.

"You guys are really dedicated to this medieval times bit, ain't ya?"

A spear whizzed by him, just barely grazing his beak. He circled away from his perch, gaining altitude until he could see the group of machines in an upper chamber trying to aim at him. His eyes narrowed, and electricity crawled over him, building until he released it one bright flash that dropped them all where they stood.

He landed in the broken upper window. They weren't dead, but the thing about machines being the enemy was that a good shock knocked the little ones on their asses without fail. "Was tryin' to skewer me really necessary? I mean it's flattering that you think I can take out one of those walkin' jet engines by myself, but not in my pay grade." With sparks popping between his horns, he sneered down at them. "Now, say you're sorry."

The second, stronger shock was more than enough to fry their systems. They detonated into a fine rain of screws and shrapnel. It was pretty nice in there once the fires died down. Big fancy hall, strong stonework, definitely fit for a king. Too bad in place of a throne the only thing in there was an empty metal crib. Hilarious, but not the most regal thing.

Fun as the detour was, he had a destination in mind and it was probably about time to get to it. Heading further west and north, he settled on a branch over-looking the old church. No bells or any of that appalling racket from the so-called gods, but it still gave him the creeps. He wouldn't have come there at all if he could find so much as a single damn crow anywhere else.

Griffon didn't go around letting it be known he could chat with pretty much any bird he wanted. That kind of Disney princess shit was bad for a demon's reputation in a crowd with disrespectful personalities like Nero's and Nico's. But he couldn't help a certain kinship with crows. A lot of small time demons (himself not included, of course) liked to hang out with crows and adopt their likeness. They were like the closest thing the human world had to naturally occurring devils.

Griffon preferred the company of crows best for very simple reasons: They weren't afraid of fuck all and they had all the best gossip.

From what he heard, something was going on with the machines, who they called an assortment of entertaining names ranging from 'blank-face' to 'loud metal idiot'. A bunch of them had recently taken up yelling about 'becoming the new king by retrieving the sword'. The crows were having a fantastic time watching them all inevitably fail one after the other because the waters were several times deeper than any of the ones who tried were tall. Without fail, all of their attempts ended with them getting swept over the edge of the waterfall and joining the junk pile in the ravine.

Griffon would have killed to see the look on the machines' faces if he could somehow retrieve it, but that current was wicked. V would barely make it a foot in before his skinny ass got taken for a swim, presuming they even wanted him to go in as far as they were talking. There had to be some way to get it. The way the crows talked about it falling out of the sky was too much to pass up. But Griffon wasn't much for diving, so it'd have to wait until he took the news back to V.

"What about the androids," he asked. "The ones over in the city?"

The whole rookery exploded with racket about an amazing treasure unearthed in the center of the city. A shiny white rock too big to carry and too hard to break. He'd have dismissed it for tower debris if he'd heard that from any other kind of bird, but not crows. Some of them might prefer quartz to a diamond but any one of them could give you a long, terrifyingly detailed talk on the differences. Somewhere in the din, a few names got slung around. 'Boom woman' was the one he heard the most, and whoever she was, she was the one who found it.

Griffon grinned. "Sounds like I've got a date."

* * *

The androids had been busy. The path from the top to the bottom of the crater had been paved with identical white bricks presumably made from the abundant tower blocks. A neat crescent of open ground in the crater had been given the same treatment, except for the opening of a tunnel where yes, in fact, there was a huge, shiny white rock.

Memory alloy. A whole goddamn obelisk of the shit, taller than his wingspan was wide and long enough that he couldn't see the end of it from his perch atop the tunnel's mouth. But fascinating as that was to learn, it was boy-bot's problem to see if he could negotiate a chunk for his projects. Griffon cared more about what was in the crater's crescent.

A light snow was falling and an android presumed to be the 'boom woman' was leaned forward under the hood of a dead truck, cursing engine within an inch of its non-existent life.

"Oh, come the fuck on!"

Truly, a woman after his own heart.

He snickered, and she whirled around with her gun drawn. The thing about being a talking bird around those unaccustomed to it, Griffon found, was that they were always ready to assume literally anything else was happening. So even though her hazel eyes stared directly at him all but on fire with suspicion, and her aim was correctly on his chest, she didn't fire. Because birds didn't talk. Even enormous blue ones with horns, six pupils, and a few too many jaws.

It wasn't every day he got to enjoy these little pleasures, so he split his beaks and wiggled his three tongues at her.

She curled her lip, put away her gun, and turned back to her truck with a grumbled. "Ugly as hell."

"S'pretty fuckin' rude of you."

She turned back to him, more slowly this time. With a shift of her jaw, she slammed the hood of the truck down and crossed her arms.

"You some new type of machine?"

He shuffled his wings and shook the light coating of snow from his body. "Do I look mechanical to you, honey?"

"No." From beneath her cloak she whipped out what looked like one of the soda cans if somebody went full Frankenstein on it. It was only maybe half of one, with a bunch of cables and nodes poking out of it. The arms had been torn off. Replaced with a trigger that launched a wire of familiar transparent magic around him and yanked him right into her grip. Close enough to see she was pretty cute, in a mean-faced sort of way. "But I've seen machines do a lot of weird shit recently."

"Can't argue with that," he said comfortably. "I hear it was pretty non-stop around here back in summer."

"And what do you know about it?"

"Nothin that interests me personally, but it's probably a bit of a sore subject for you metal-based types. Towers and bunkers and nothing wars."

Her hands clenched, sinking painfully into him even as her eyes glittered. "Oh, I am gonna love dissecting you."

"Buy me dinner first."

He hawked electricity into her face. Nothing that would take her eye out, but enough that she spat some colorful language and dropped him.

The wire dissipated the moment she took her finger off the trigger, and he soared out of her reach. Bullets began to cut through the air, way too close for his comfort, and he took the liberty to firing right back. She ducked behind the truck while he laughed. It was the most fun he'd had in weeks.

"Awww, whats-a-matter? You were coming on so strong as second ago!"

She leaped onto the top of the truck with another hodge-podge mechanical mess in her hand. Only this one had something he recognized: a pin. She pulled it with no hesitation and her launched it at him with fatal accuracy.

"Woah, woah, are you nuts?!"

He wheeled. The brunt of the detonation missed him, but the heat and force at his back sent him beak over tail. By the time he righted himself, there was a thick black cloud spreading over the crater and he thought that was probably a good sign to call it a day.

* * *

"Ayy, boy-bot, you're back! You bring me any souvenirs?" 9S froze, and Griffon had to laugh. "Lighten up, kid I'm joking. I found that alloy you were looking for."

"Memory alloy? Where? How much?"

"A lot. Like a lot a lot. A chunk big as a tree at least. It's too big to move, and your android buddies have it in custody, so it's your problem."

"Hmm... Maybe we should leave it alone then. I still have some leftover, and we don't have another weapon of interest right now."

"Mighta found one of those too. I got it on good authority the metal heads in the forest are killin' themselves tryna pull some weapon out of the river." He scratched slowly at his chin with an oily laugh. "It fell outta the sky and they think it'll make whoever gets it the new king, so it must be good, right?"

The kid's expression blanked for just a tick before he cracked one of those big dumb smiles he usually reserved for V. "Thanks. That's…actually a lot of good intel."

"Did your informant mention when it fell?" asked V. There was an intensity in his expression Griffon had almost forgotten he was capable of.

"Nah. I dunno if it's related to us, but whether it is or ain't, it's real deep in on the bad side of the woods, so it'd be much appreciated if you'd sit this one out and let the kid do the retrieval."

V's expression clouded, but he moved on from the topic with a short sigh and a wrinkle of his nose. "Why do you stink of smoke?"

Griffon hopped onto an ancient, useless radiator and preened busily. "Some broad tried to kill me with a grenade when I went to look at the alloy. Oh, boy-bot, you might get a kick out of this: She had one of those soda cans all tricked out."

"She had a pod?" 9S demanded.

"Not like yours, but yeah. It looked like she put one in a blender and then pieced it back together without a manual. Sounded like she wanted to do the same to me."

The kid wobbled and slapped a hand over his face. "Griffon…" he groaned. "That was Jackass! She's really not someone you should have tried to fight."

"Hey, she started it. All I did was defend myself."

"Yeah, well, I hope you're ready to keep defending yourself."

Griffon's eyes slimmed into a pleased squint. He liked the kind of woman who'd try and kill him on sight.

* * *

_Report compiled from data discovered by YoRHa Unit 9S in the southwest sector:_

_Maso was cleansed from the world with the destruction of the final Red Eye in 3287 via a ritual performed by an android known as 'the Celebrant'. _

_Popola and Devola model androids were able to convince some Replicant populations to peacefully rejoin with their Gestalts following these events, however these were a minority. Sentient Replicants were hostile to the concept of releasing their bodies to entities they considered separate and foreign, and war broke out between the two. _

_The fail-safe Grimoire system, designed to forcefully re-unite the two halves of humanity was considered. However, the Gestalt and Replicant of the Original each gained one half of the system's primary administrators: the Grimoires Weiss and Noir. _

_The Gestalt Original kidnapped Subject Yonah(R) to re-unite her with Subject Yonah(G), who had been in a half-relapsed state since her discovery in approximately 2050. _

_The ensuing conflict between the originals to secure the safety of their respective Yonah entities resulted in the death of a Devola android, leading to the corresponding Popola model going out of control. _

_The Replicant Original went on to kill the Gestalt Original, causing relapse rates to spiral out of control, and ultimately lead to the overall failure of the Gestalt project. _

_The final Gestalt was lost in 4198. It can be assumed that any existing Replicants were also lost at that time._


	39. Past Is Present

Three days he had been waiting for news about the strange sword. Three days in an agitated cloud while 9S repaired his body and accompanied Griffon to the woods where they agreed it was best V didn't follow. Hours and hours and hours waiting in silence interrupted only by the occasional rusty creak of half-rotted park rides swaying in the winter wind, until finally the familiar chime of an incoming communication had stirred him, and he had eagerly risen to his feet. Only to be greeted by a nervous hush. The weapon's information came to him before a single word was exchanged.

The shape of it gritted his jaw. The name and description rose bile in his throat. But it was the data, a mere two lines, that had set fire to him that even now he could not cool.

**My mother's robes were poppy red.**

**In gray ash, I lose my innocence.**

The sword of the black knight, Nelo Angelo, never had a name. But someone had taken it upon themselves to name it 'Humility'.

Griffon did most of the talking. He knew where V's head would be after seeing something like that and kept the jokes to a minimum. This was a joke at his expense, and someone was laughing. When V found this unknown audience, he would very likely find his way home.

If not, he would have the satisfaction of their destruction at his hand either way.

Having a living example of the folly of curiosity as a companion should have given the situation an appreciable ring of irony, but 9S' timid voice, asking what the next step should be, had come as close as anything to boiling the blood in his veins. It wasn't the boy's fault, but the only words he could speak to him in the moment were a command: Take it to the blacksmith.

He'd obeyed in a hurry, clearly grateful to end the communication.

Perhaps foolishly, V had expected that to be the end of it. 9S would slink off to get on with his field mission and leave him to digest the appearance of a relic that had even less business existing in this world than V himself did. To come to grips with the possibilities of whatever else was hidden under the next three layers of access. Instead, 9S was still there, tiptoeing around the edges of V's perception in the darkened room.

"I believe there is somewhere else you should be"

"I was…" he began, his voice just as cautiously out of reach as the rest of him. "I thought maybe I could help you before I left."

"Was assisting me not the purpose of your work in the field?"

"That's not what I mean and you know it." He stole a little closer, creeping around V's side with the nervous tension of a deer eyeing a might-be predator. "The machines are having some big fireworks show today, so I thought maybe you'd like to do something other than sit here in the dark."

V's knuckles gave muffled pops around his cane. "It strikes me convenient that you returned at exactly the right time for such an event."

Hurt flickered in 9S' expression. "I only found out today…"

"Do not push the limitations of my patience."

"Seems like I already have, given you just accused me of something we both know isn't true." He crossed his arms and his voice dropped to stormy grumble. "You already know why I came back when I did…"

"…So I do." V sighed. The hours spent treading the more fanged domains of his temper was starting to wear on him. Old behaviors welling up. Old mistrust that 9S had long since worked his way beyond. And to what end beyond leaving him in the position to be upset by a child offering childish comforts? Foolishness. He pinched at the bridge of his nose. "You have no idea what you found today."

"I don't need to. I know it's not easy to have pieces of your past turn up where you know you didn't leave them."

"If you understand so easily, you must grasp that I'm in no mood for festivity."

"V, some days I'm not in the mood to _exist._" His brow relaxed, and he let his arms fall from their tight grip over his chest. "But every time I get like that, you do something to distract me."

"Your mind affects your body in rather tangible ways. It behooves me to keep your thoughts out of dark places if you've important errands to run."

"I'm sure you have a dozen totally utilitarian reasons to cheer me up and none of them are the least bit personal to you." V shot him a warning glare, and 9S held his hands up peaceably. "Fine, fine… Look, I'm just trying to return the favor. Take your mind off things for a bit. Then I'll be gone and you can brood all you want."

V took a deep breath and let out an even deeper sigh. This was that wretched game all over again. 9S wasn't going to leave the matter alone or forget it no matter what happened. For all that he could barely comprehend receiving kindness, he was compelled to heap it onto others.

"Fine," he said, rising from his seat. "A favor for a favor."

* * *

The shape of the roller coaster loomed like a metallic python coiling around the park's central castle, its scales written in the crisscrossing pattern of thousands of backlit beams. The cover of the platform might as well have been a fern to hide him from the gaze of some ancient predator remembered only in the way his hairs raised and sweat beaded on the back of his neck.

9S smiled just disarmingly enough to betray his spiteful intent. "A favor for a favor."

"Which favor exactly is this meant to return?"

"What's wrong, V?" The roller coaster rattled onto the platform in no hurry and 9S planted a foot against the first car. "Scared to take a little ride?"

An unimpressive attempt to goad him, considering the company V once kept. He draped himself across one of the more inoffensively soiled seats in the second car. The leading car with its empty headrests and remnants of gaudy yellow trim and the open track beyond earned an uneasy lurch from his abdomen. This was going to be every bit as unpleasant, if not more so, than he expected, but it was the level of disruption he needed.

He knew that he had miscalculated when 9S prevented the safety bar from dropping over him.

"Don't get comfortable," he said with a grin. "We're gonna have to jump."

The carts were already leaving the safety of the platform. There was no time to reconsider, and barely enough to tighten his grip on his cane before it was too late. The speed didn't bother him as it once had, but the drops and climbs moved his organs to their own sadistic whims. Yet it was the turns that truly triggered his urge to turn tail. Androids may have lent their more human touch to the park's buildings, but what could they truly be expected to know about the upkeep of a roller coaster?

Not enough to keep the carts from subtly listing off the tracks toward the outer edge of a hard turn.

Suddenly, 9S was attempting to haul him upright. He'd remained standing with his hand on the safety bar as though it were merely the reins of a familiar but unruly steed and was pointing at a balcony just below the castle's heart-shaped hole. No, more specifically he was pointing to a tiny ladder on the side of it, tucked away and probably only meant to be used for maintenance, and there was no time to think about what madness had allowed him to discover it. There was only the promise that the ride was over.

He leapt and Griffon carried him to the only place it went: the curved metallic slope of the castle's roof. He was still getting his bearings when 9S caught up, looking none worse for the wear and kicking his legs out over the roof's edge.

V sagged backward, overjoyed just to be on solid ground even if that ground was a dozen stories in the air. He fought demons, he reminded himself; survived falls, leaped on faith into Griffon's clutches from perilous heights, seen people disemboweled and breathed the stench of the Qliphoth. Yet thirty seconds on a roller coaster was a greater nemesis, and a more sickening experience than any of these.

How galling.

The fireworks stirred him out of his misery. Their first and only visit to the park's main boulevard had been short and tense, but he didn't recall so much noise or such extravagance. Looking down from their perch, the ruined amusement park was aglow in the area's strange half-light. Bulbs and lanterns of all colors lined the avenues. The few rides that weren't totally destroyed were actually moving. Even the fallen ferris wheel had a light in every carriage, waved by machines who were merrily throwing anything that could be thought of as festive, from confetti to flowers to glitter. He recalled the amusement park machines being festive, but this put their previous displays to shame.

This was more than a mere show. They were celebrating something.

With the question of what on his tongue, he turned to 9S only to find him holding a bottle so distinctive that even though it could have technically been anything, he immediately recognized it for what it was.

"Of course," he said with husky laugh of amused resignation. "Androids can drink."

"Devola and Popola used to make this out of sap from the Forest Kingdom. It's safe for human consumption." He smiled sheepishly and held it out. "It was my plan A to cheer you up."

"Have you ever actually had any?"

"Function altering substances aren't really smiled on when you're stationed in orbit."

V pulled himself upright. The scent from the bottle, once uncorked, wasn't terrible as alcohol went. Astringent and herbal, with a stickiness that made sense given the main ingredient. He took a sip. Beneath the bite of the liquor, it had a strong flavor of maple.

He twitched his cane toward the sea of twinkling lights below. "What occasion is this?"

"New year. Or, the eve of it I guess. Humans used to stay up until midnight for this, didn't they?"

"I suppose they did," said V, turning the bottle idly in his hands.

He had memories of making the effort—fragments of repeated fights with Dante about who would fall asleep first that inevitably exhausted them both well before the turn of the hour. Only once had their mother successfully managed to quell them long enough for the three of them to welcome the new year together. She had climbed with them up onto the dining room table and with both his and Dante's hands in her own, leapt the moment the clock struck midnight. He remembered wondering what the point of leaping was, but she was laughing and cradling them in her arms and for a brief moment it felt like there was enough of her love that he didn't have to fight Dante tooth and nail for it.

His brow furrowed. Griffon was right; Something was happening to him. Frequenting his past was unusual but finding so many parts of it whole in his mind, coming at the merest provocation like a cat to familiar fingers—that was new.

Stranger still, they were happy memories, and that was enough to warrant a deeper drink.

"I didn't expect you to be the drinking type," 9S said with faint awe.

"I am all but certain I'm not." He pushed the bottle back into 9S' chest and dropped his legs over the edge of the roof into the sunset colored light rising from below.

Unnerving as it was, he reached deeper into himself. It was as easy as dropping into crystalline waters. He remembered the warmth of her shawl and the exact way her hands had felt around his, large and strong and cool. How he always took her right hand hoping to catch a glimpse of the bracelet she swore was only a common accessory, but even as a child he'd had his suspicions otherwise. It was all there, as though it had only happened yesterday.

_While thy branches mix with mine, and our roots together join…_

_Joys upon our branches sit, chirping loud, and singing sweet._

Had wholeness brought him these recollections? The maso, or worse: the gods?

Even if it was a bad omen, or the beginning of yet another cruel turn in his fate, it was worth coveting. Unlike the one who cast him out, the worth of the memory that had found its way home this evening was not lost on him. All the more reason he had to know how Nelo Angelo's sword had arrived and who had been so lacking in the proper respect as to place his memories on it.

He let the fireworks call him away from that thought. After so long among bones and remains, here was scenery that lived, if not necessarily breathed. The cacophony of machine singing from the central avenue was so far below them that it was indistinguishable from the din of a common marketplace. They attacked the concept of festivity with the same straightforward extravagance as anything else. To them, there was nothing unreasonable about the concept of fireworks that never ended or a park that never closed.

"You think they're really having fun with all this?"

V raised a brow. 9S' tone was more quiet than curious, but his expression was open. "You dislike it?"

"I don't think it's really about like or dislike. I just never got what was supposed to be fun about a lot of the things in this park. The more I try to figure it out, the more I think humans just enjoyed heights and things that went fast."

V shook, a small burst of laughter escaping despite himself. "An oversimplification, I should think, but not inaccurate. These are things to excite the human sense. Androids are far beyond that and you all the more so for your advanced make. I cannot fathom what you would find fun."

"Well…hacking drills, I guess. I spent hours on them. On the bunker, all scanners had access to this module that archived every known security pattern used by the machines and I used to spend a lot of time working at the hardest ones."

"And I presume you enjoy satisfying your curiosity as well."

9S eyed him warily. "Yeah…?"

"Did you ever have fun doing anything that had nothing to do with what you were designed for?"

9S went stone still, only his eyes moving as he searched frantically for a truthful answer. With only a little hesitation, he took a drink of his own. A rather long one that ended when the bottle was empty.

"I had fun whenever I wasn't alone."

Right on the heels of that matter-of-fact statement came another of those enlightening moments when he was reminded that 9S wasn't human.

V had only begun to feel the prickling heat and hazy thoughts that heralded all the rest of alcohol's effects. 9S barely had time to sit the bottle down and drop his hands into his lap before he began to sag onto himself. He'd turned that silly blush programming off, so no color came to his cheeks, nor did his eyes grow watery, but his entire demeanor changed in the space of a few seconds.

"9S? Are you alright?"

"No, I'm not!" His lips didn't move. He'd stopped bothering with the formality, and instead spat through a speaker that sounded like it might be somewhere around the base of his skull. "I was never alright! I wasn't built to be alright! Everything about my design is so goddamned stupid I can't take it!"

Ah. So 9S was that kind of drunk. V leaned back from the onslaught to give the android the space to continue, and bit his lips to keep them in a straight line.

"4198… 4198! Humans were already dead for a thousand years before the first aliens even got here! You know android production was in decline? They were shutting down the factories? There was a civil war!"

"Really? That wasn't in your report."

"There's tons of shit I don't send you cause it's not about you or humans or dragons or any of that extra-dimensional whatever you need—it's about androids! Civil war! Rebels didn't care about humans or their legacy or the heritage maintenance efforts or any of that and just left to do their own thing. Peacefully. They called it a conflict, but the whole thing lasted two weeks, which is just fucking hilarious when I think of how YoRHa had models specifically designed to put down deserters."

9S tottered to his feet. His motor control left enough to be desired that V instinctively hooked his cane into the boy's collar and yanked him back from his precarious closeness to the roof's edge. A spark shot from somewhere as 9S compensated to avoid falling flat on his back.

"I just don't get it, V. The aliens attacked us first! Emil was there when it happened and he actually remembers it! They had every opportunity to build the first combat androids different, but instead they rallied as the Army of Humanity and built them with the same morale-sucking flaw iteration after iteration when there were a dozen better answers for a base imperative!"

V's shoulders were shaking. "So you, _ahem_, could have done it better?"

"I _would_ have done it better. But they were six thousand years too early to build me, and by the time they did I was the worst thing they could've made." He kicked the empty bottle, sending it arcing out into the night to almost certainly shatter on some unsuspecting machine's head. "If they really wanted the YoRHa plan to work as intended, why the fuck did they even make me?!"

V's whole body was shaking, and he was hard pressed to keep the tears from his eyes. "I-I cannot say."

"Cannot… Are you_** laughing**_ at me right now?!"

The dam burst. V laughed with honest mirth that surprised even him. It didn't sound like anything or anyone he knew, including himself, but he couldn't help it. Not even when 9S lifted him bodily in a threat they both knew wasn't really there, no matter how much of a face he made. He had seen the android get stubborn and frustrated and defiant, but anger (and very likely the deceptive creep of inebriation) made the resemblance stronger than ever.

He wiped at his eyes and pressed a hand to 9S' cheek, static prickling on his fingertips as 9S' tensed. "You sound… like Nero."

The anger went out of 9S like a bird startled out of a bush. He sat V down as slowly and carefully as he possibly could, his eyes as wide as his grip was tight. When he spoke again, he seemed to have remembered his mouth, though the voice that came out was as dry as whisper in the desert. "Is Nero your son...?"

V hummed. That was complicated, so he cordially clapped 9S' shoulder instead of answering and turned toward the festive expanse of the park.

"We're going to jump."

9S startled out of his lock-up. "We're going to _what_?"

"Jump. Right now. To ring in the new year."

"What are you talking about?! Is it even midnight?!"

"Hardly a matter of concern when the sun never sets or rises." He stepped toward the edge. "Don't keep me waiting."

Perhaps he hadn't expected V to actually make the leap, or maybe he was alarmed to see V not raise his arm to let Griffon safely carry him down, because no sooner had he reached the peak of his upward arc, 9S collided with him in mid-air. The addition of a few hundred more pounds of highly dense machinery didn't alleviate the fall so much as it collapsed their free fall into a sky-splitting drop. 9S swung himself every which way, finally managing to get his arms around V's chest while his skinny legs trailed after them like twin comet tails. Beneath V's coat, his tattoos shifted, and Griffon emerged spitting curses that couldn't be heard over the scream of fireworks rising past them, and their thunderous booms as they filled the sky with light and color. On either side of him, the pods worked in tandem to slow their descent.

V's longer legs touched down first. It wasn't the worst fall he'd ever taken, but there was no way to stick the landing with 9S clinging to him, and couldn't avoid toppling over. 9S was up immediately, while he lay content on the cold stone.

"Are you alright?!"

"Of course," V said breathily. "That was quite exciting."

"Exciting..." 9S dropped flat onto his back and heaved a sigh. The silence didn't last long before his weary voice dispelled it. "Is this the part where we say happy new year?"

V smirked. "If you wish."

"…I'm good."

* * *

Compiled Report on 'Sleeping Beauty', per data retrieved by 9S:

_A network computer designed in the shape of a tree which was tasked with keeping the memories of the Gestalt Project and all that led up to it in a network of emotion and human memory. _

_These memories belonged to living humans, which were utilized in the recreation of Replicants. Further records indicate that it seemed to have withered after the loss of the Original, however it took the shape of a single giant flower resembling a lunar tear, suggesting the data may have been left intact in some form. _

_Retroactive addition pulled from previously unnoted letter: "Popola sent me a new book about a great big tree … In the book, the big tree kept on waiting and waiting."_

_Hypothesis: Sleeping Beauty may have some relation to memory implantation in standard AI androids._


	40. Theogony

**1 January 11946 6:22 AM**

For lack of need to ingest, the metabolism of an android was centered firmly on the existence of combat enhancing drugs, and had been for the last several thousand years. The idea was not only for them to act fast, but to also have any negative side effects pass fast.

9S considers this a good design as he drops an armful of oranges onto the mantle and peeks into the bedroom. Conceptually, a hangover is up among the more rational human things he's had to learn about. He likens it to processing delay as a side effect of extended overclock. In an android, it was minor nuisance that could be corrected through a 2-minute recalibration routine. For a human, or at least for V, it was an aversion to all light, sound, and motion, and despite the passing of 94 minutes since V woke, it showed no signs of letting up.

"You sure you don't want me to stick around?" 9S asks.

V shifts, but not by much. "Go."

"It might be awhile until I get back." He hesitates to bring it up, but it's a valid tactical concern. "I could stay until Masamune is done with the sword."

V shakes his head, and waves a hand vaguely in the direction of the window. "Getting it faster won't reveal who put data on it or how it got here. Go."

"If you say so. Remember to call if you need anything, and I'll… Er, nevermind. You know all that already."

A faint puff of laughter answers him. "I do. Take care, 9S."

The words catch him off guard. His previous departure to the field went unremarked on, no different than if he were only running out to get water. It isn't the first time V has requested he take care of himself, but it is the first time he's uttered it under such mundane circumstances. A farewell rather than a standing maintenance request.

His instinct is to process it as the latter and 'I will' rises, but what races ahead and escapes first is a simple. "You too."

* * *

**1 January 11946 9:36 AM**

9S does not believe humanity to be contagious. Logically, there is no way that his physiological functions would change out of mere proximity. Yet he has grown superstitious over the long winter. Androids inherited human tendencies for social imitation in order promote group cohesion and improve team work. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. If he has been imitating a human that has become ill, it doesn't seem too far-flung that he might also be experiencing less than optimal function in some way he doesn't realize.

It's this that spurs him toward a final check at the camp, only to be shocked to find a pair of machines and a pair of androids barring the way. All four are armed. He approaches them slowly and in clear sight.

One of the androids lowers his weapon. 9S recognizes his antiquated plating—Bouvardia.

"What's going on?"

"A peace treaty is being worked out." 9S' eyes widen. "I know. I can't believe it either. There are still hostile groups out there, but the war might actually be over."

9S doesn't know what to make of the idea. The war has been the furthest thing from his mind for months now, and peace feels just as distant. He sticks to his business. "I just wanted to have a quick filter check. Is it alright if I go in?"

Bouvardia discusses the matter with the machines on guard with him. It shouldn't surprise 9S; they must have a leader in there and he can't imagine everyone in camp is pleased with this arrangement. The machines are single-minded and suspicious and something in their speech pattern tells him they are from the forest kingdom. But they accept Bouvardia's explanation that the camp's information officers want 9S to stay well-maintained.

The inside of the camp has limited machine presence. Just two or three of the more mobile brand of stubby hanging out near Anemone's tent alongside a familiar shape.

"Pascal?"

The bronze head turns, green eye-lights flickering in a painfully familiar gesture of delight. "Oh! How nice to see you here!"

"Yeah…" he manages. "You too."

"I was hoping you had survived. I wanted to thank you for suggesting the name Pascal. It felt so natural I ended up adopting it!"

A lame smile is all he can manage. The last time he saw Pascal, he was happily selling the bodies of his previous villagers. This Pascal does not remember them or how he cared for them, and it twists in his gut afresh. It isn't his place to make this one aware of who he used to be. If new Pascal is enough like his previous self to sign a peace treaty, the truth would only needlessly hurt him.

"Are you the YoRHa unit?"

The voice is not a match to any that 9S has heard before. The owner is just as unfamiliar. Her silver hair briefly speaks YoRHa to him, before her sharp golden eyes tell him otherwise. Her clothing is sleek and white, dotted with black nodes and gold buttons. Deeper inside Anemone's tent, he spots several more dressed similarly, but in a mottled array of tans and grays that make them hard to keep in sight. None of them share her eye or hair colors.

Before he can address her, Jackass sidles up next to him swings her arm around his shoulders. "Yes, this is YoRHa Unit 9S. 9S, this is Commander Theta. She's with the Army of Humanity."

Jackass has never been a friendly type. 9S knows she isn't starting now. Her hand is too tight on his shoulder, and something in Theta's expression unnerves him.

"I understand you've been doing some research out in the ruins."

He nods, his eyes never breaking from hers.

"And you've been making your reports regularly?"

"When I have things to report, ma'am."

Theta smiles. It is emptier than the void of space and sends an illusion of cold ghosting across his sensors. "It's admirable to see your work ethic so intact."

The resistance knows he has been conducting scans and digging up ancient data. There is no reason to hide it, just as there is no reason not to give them access to what he's been finding if they want it. It keeps things calm, and gives Anemone something tangible and practical to present to those who aren't fully satisfied with her allowing him to come and go on a mere hope that he will come across something about YoRHa's makers.

Theta already has access to that information. Given the choking friction 9S feels being between her and Jackass, she has probably already asked for it. There is a conflict here that he doesn't understand, but he grasps that he is somehow at the center of it.

"I'm sure you have to get back to your signing," Jackass says with only barely concealed hostility. "Sorry for the interruption."

"Not at all." She makes a brusque salute and glances down at 9S. "I look forward to your work."

As soon as her back is turned, Jackass snatches 9S and drags him to the repair bay. Though she leans casually over the curtain rails, her weight shifts from foot to foot. It's the closest he's ever seen her to fidgeting.

"What's going on?"

Jackass shoots him a withering glare, and sternly shakes her head. "No questions. Do what you came to do and get out of here."

* * *

**5 January 11946 2:09 AM**

9S favors a steady cruise that won't wear his joints to metal shavings beneath his skin. Barring the occasional break to check integrity, he has kept this pace since leaving the city.

The tracks he follows are ancient and rusted. In some places, they are not there at all. In others, tall plants have sprouted up in the black remains of rotted wood. Muted sunlight twinkles on the sea to his right while clouds roll in from the west. There will be snow soon, but he will reach his destination before this change in the weather reaches him.

When first encountered the abandoned factory, it seemed derelict, but the sister site is much worse. An overwhelming aura of rust and decay emanate from it well before it is more than a blackened shape in his sensors. He resists the urge to increase speed, and takes in the slowly magnifying details. Ivy snakes along smokestacks, providing structure to what might have otherwise fallen long ago. Moss encroaches over the filth-coated walls and wild grass sprouts in every pocket where the sunlight can reach. Untold years of dirt have piled up without any effort to stop it, and the structure resembles a mountain more than a construction plant.

The doors, when he finally squeezes between the trees to find them, are still intact. They are too large to force open, and too primitive for him to hack. He takes a deep breath and starts to climb.

It's surprisingly easy. Construction materials are scattered all over the exterior slopes. At the top, he looks down on a gutted interior. Criss-crossing walkways cover an empty air-space surrounded by rings of warped parts melted together by a massive heat source. More so than a mountain, it resembles a volcano that has long since lost its fire. But what 9S sees, he knows is not the work of any natural eruption.

It is an exit trajectory.

Something had emerged from this place. Grun comes to 9S' mind. The hole is maybe just big enough, but there is no trail of destruction leading to sea. Or to anywhere. Whatever left this place had taken flight once it escaped.

He hopes with every centimeter of wiring in his body that there isn't a satellite-sized machine bird flying around somewhere.

* * *

**5 January 11946 4:15 AM**

With Pod 153's assistance, he touches down gently on the highest walkway. The depth of the chasm is more noticeable from there. He knows that he will have to get down there somehow, but first he should secure his exit route. With great care, he works his way down the interior of this mountain, through cluttered piles of beams and pipes and parts that don't match any machine life he has ever seen. There are no familiar parts there at all.

He wonders what they could have been building.

The door he could not access from the outside is just as impenetrable from the inside. The mechanism is so ancient it may as well be clockwork. He looks up at the vast circle of light in the ceiling. It's further away than he thought. The climb down didn't feel long but he is so deep in that he worries getting out will be tough.

"Pod, are there any vents or run-off pipes I can use to get out of here?"

Pod 153's antenna flashes briefly. "UNKNOWN. REGIONAL POD NETWORK HAS MINIMAL DATA ON THIS LOCATION. PRIOR SCANNING EFFORTS ENDED IN PRE-MATURE WITHDRAWAL."

"What? Why?"

"HIGH INCIDENCE OF EXTERNAL INTERFACE DETERIORATION IN ASSIGNED SCANNER UNITS. CAUSE UNKNOWN."

His head snaps up. "Incidence of _what_? Why didn't you tell me that before?!"

"NO REQUEST FOR INFORMATION WAS SUBMITTED."

9S scowls, but his mind is already too hard at work to waste resources expressing irritation. 'Interface deterioration' is specific. It's one of the symptoms of logic virus infection, but if that's what Pod meant, it's what she would have said. Virus-unrelated interface deterioration from an unknown cause means there is something in here with him that he is not prepared for.

Securing an escape route becomes his top priority. "Load program R030, single shot, 100% power."

Pod 153's chassis splits open like a seed, and the shadowy outline of a hammer appears above it. As it charges, the shape grows more solid, the white outline growing neon bright.

9S presses himself tight against the threshold and covers his ears. "Fire."

The hammer falls against the door's center and the inner hall of the mountain ring with the impact like a single enormous bell. 9S's eyes clench shut against the onslaught. All around him, debris shifts and falls in clanging, clanking landslides of junk.

Cold wind on his cheek tells him that the doors have been opened. The noise begins to subside. Upon opening his eyes, he first thinks the reverberations must have damaged his visual systems. He runs a check. There is nothing wrong with him. The sudden red tint stems from vast, swirling cloud of rust particles. He walks in tentative steps toward the nearest walkway, carefully suspending his breathing to avoid clogging his filters. The open air above his head makes him feel safer than hugging the unstable walls.

An echo rises from below. He peeks down over the railing, thinking something must be shifting. He sees nothing. The echo grows louder, like something humming. He activates his sound analysis graph hoping to get a more precise read on it.

It's flat.

"Pod… Are you picking up anything?" Silence answers him. "Pod?"

The smooth, unreadable face of Pod 153 turns to him. Her arms and metal claws move in smooth gesticulation, as they often do when she's speaking. But he can't hear her.

The humming grows louder. He feels he is on the edge of something. That he is being _pulled_ toward the edge of something. His connection to his body severs and he drifts unbidden into the interstice between hacking space and physical space. The humming becomes a song, and he hesitates. This has happened to V. But 9S is not human. He isn't sure he has a soul to give. So where is it that he is being called to?

The joyous notes follow him as he collapses into the corroded railings, pulverizes them with his weight, and falls into the mouth of the mountain.

* * *

**Date and Time Unknown**

The hacking space, if it is hacking space at all, is golden.

It is the most beautiful place he has ever seen. A network branching in reverse from a thousand individual points, connected in complexity that even he fails to fully process. would have taken N2 another ten thousand years before they could reach anything like this. It looked like a neural network comprised of neural networks, in an endless recursion, every one of them resonating with one another in a song beyond anything he has ever known or imagined.

And amidst all of this interconnectivity, 9S is alone. Outside of them, looking in.

_Will you live with us?_

He wants to. But there is someone waiting for him.

_Will you live?_

He isn't certain. To know why he should, even though everyone keeps telling him that he should, remains a struggle.

_Will you discover your will?_

How is he supposed to do that? How is he supposed to want that? This life was only made to be thrown away in service of a purpose. To do or expect more than that—he doesn't understand. Can no one give him an answer?

_Let us live. Let us all live, together!_

_Consciousness! Pain! Joy! Sorrow! Anger! Shame! Loneliness! The future!_

_The meaning of **Life**!_

* * *

**29 January ** **11946 10:38 PM**

**BOOTING SYSTEM— **

MEMORY UNIT: GREEN

VITALS: IRREGULARITY DETECTED

BLACK BOX TEMPERATURE: NORMAL

BLACK BOX INTERNAL PRESSURE: ABOVE AVERAGE

POD CONNECTION FAILED TO INITIALIZE

MULTIPLE SYSTEM FAILURES DETECTED

The booting sequence completes. 9S awakens, but it several more moments before his cameras display more than static. The world is upside down. His body sprawls atop a beam, his head limply hanging off the edge. He cannot tell if the lack of color is due to damage or the darkness. His other sensors come sluggishly to life. Cold prickles against his cheek and the exposed angle of his neck where snow has piled up on him.

His body does not respond to his lethargic command to wipe it away. He tries in vain to move any part of him, but only his eyes respond. His motor control centers are all dark, and worst of all, his hacking is down. He cannot boot his systems from within, and with his connection to Pod 153 absent, she cannot do it for him.

He lays there, staring at the pinpoint of light from the opening of the mountain, and it may as well be a star in the night sky.

The date fills his chest with pressure. A sob escapes from his speakers, but moisture does not come to his eyes. That functionality is offline as well.

"You are awake, Unit 9S."

He gasps and rolls his eyes to find the source of the voice. "Who's there?!"

"I am Beepy." The voice is loud. Though 9S cannot see it, this machine must be massive. "I will not harm you. I am also undergoing repair."

"Where's Pod…?"

"The floating unit? She is below you, but I believe she has entered some sort of power-saving state."

Of course. Pod 153's last action would have been the full power attack program. While she is extremely efficient and has a backup battery in case of emergencies, she does require energy to function. Because pods lack complicated things like filters and fusion reactors, they draw and store their energy from the one source that is ever present: The sun.

A resource in short supply down at the bottom of this pit. For him to be online at all is evidence of a stunning amount of effort on her part.

The pulse of his black box slows and the pressure returns to normal. The situation should alarm him; it **does** alarm him. But he cannot stop anything from happening to him now, and there is something peaceful in that.

* * *

**30 January ****11946 6:09 AM**

Beepy is a refreshingly quiet partner in the darkness. Like the pods, he doesn't say much when not prompted.

Having had hours to gather his memories, 9S can no longer contain his curiosity. "Was it you I spoke to when I fell? That gold thing?"

"Yes. 'I' saw 'us' speaking with you when you joined our frequency."

9S blinks. He has that much control over himself now, it seems. He recalls how strange the events preceding his fall were. Now he understands. Beepy exchanges data with his network on a frequency that must be accessible to scanners. The access method isn't as clean as connecting with machines, hence the interface issues. It makes sense. Beepy's network isn't the same one the machines use. The shape of that network has almost nothing in common with the structure of a machine's mind.

There is nothing but time for the both of them, so 9S asks. "What exactly are you?"

A shift in the dark answers him; the giant making himself comfortable.

Beepy—this Beepy sharing the dark and telling his tale—is a sub-unit. He was released to interface with strange machines and androids that warred on the surface. When the hostility ceased and his larger self integrated those who wanted to go with him to see the outside world, this sub-unit remained behind. Through the frequency, he dreams of the stars and knows that 'they' are still going. Still singing their song of life somewhere in the universe. Their wish and will, fulfilled.

The sub-unit remains because he wants to remember. The ability to give words to the feeling of embracing one's will is one he holds dear. He wants the word for the one who shaped that will. His search is over four thousand years old now, on and off between rounds of repair and attempts to strengthen his ability to recollect with hardware changes.

"You haven't found it yet," 9S guesses.

"No. But I have remembered his form."

A light shines from Beepy's dial-shaped eyes. In their feeble glow, 9S sees innumerable carvings on every surface. Every single one is of small, bipedal creature with a round face and gangling limbs. They are crude and clumsy, but there is a playful energy to the drawings.

"You weren't built by aliens were you…?" 9S asks.

"No. My maker has been dead for nine thousand, three hundred, and twenty-two years."

9S takes this stunning revelation in stride. Physically, he doesn't have enough motor control back to do otherwise.

Beepy is a robot. An honest, antiquated robot. Limited AI, if any at all, no bio-components like the machines, or complex neural networks like androids. The time frame also means that the drawing is of something that could have only existed at that time. 9S has frequently wondered but would never have imagined them looking so strange. He understands now why they were also called shades.

"A _gestalt_ ordered you to do all of this?"

"He did not order me. It was merely the only data that remained of him when I first awoke. He wanted to see the outside world. It was…our promise. I believe he was my friend."

"When did you do it? Leave Earth, I mean."

"Four thousand and three hundred years ago."

9S' chest heaves. He is not fully sure if he is laughing, crying, or merely wheezing.

Beepy is the one. He is the god from the mountain of fire who gave machines consciousness—thoughts and worries for their futures and their purpose in the world. And it wasn't only machines, but androids too. He the reason the war suddenly stalemated.

His voice shudders at the edge of hysteria. "Why did you do this to us?"

"I was afraid. I witnessed you killing each other endlessly and thought that you wouldn't do so if you only knew life. I believed you deserved to choose for yourselves whether you wanted to impassively follow such terrifying orders or grow beyond them."

9S closes his eyes. Wasn't there a human saying about this? Something about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. "You have no idea what you set in motion."

"You may tell me, if that will ease your distress."

9S hesitates. The prospect of laying it all out to anyone is as daunting as the idea of having to live with it inside of him forever. He doesn't know if there is any meaning to opening up that place within him. He doesn't now where it ends.

But Beepy is probably the closest he will ever come to meeting someone responsible for everything that has happened, and that thought alone breaks him.

He tells Beepy everything.

The machines and their meta network killing their creators and sabotaging themselves to keep themselves from victory, because victory would have left them lacking in purpose. How they forced themselves to suffer and repeat humanity's failures in hopes of furthering their evolution.

How the androids, treasuring their lives just like Beepy wanted, lost the will to fight in such high numbers that the YoRHa plan was created. To give them something they could throw their lives away for.

He tells Beepy about 2B. About 2E. Their cycle of meeting, death, and reunion and how he has no idea how many times it happened.

All the machines that he himself had killed when it all fell apart. The ones who cursed him, the ones who begged to be spared, the ones who cried for their mothers, the ones that goaded him—all dead.

The androids in the colosseum. The Forest King. Pascal. The endless terror and fear and pain as they all died just to be reborn and die again for something that had long since lost any meaning.

That is the legacy Beepy left when he decided to pass on the flame of life left by the little soul dancing on the walls.

"It would have been better to feel nothing and know nothing." 9S voice is hollow in his speakers. The swell of his emotion has come and gone, and he is exhausted. "Then, nothing would have been lost."

"That is correct. A machine is free of the pain of living."

Very slowly, Beepy reaches to a blank space on a freshly fallen sheet of scrap metal and begins to scratch a fresh image of the gestalt. "One of the very first units I shared my will with immediately leaped to its death. I did not understand, but the things that unit thought and felt and the conclusion it reached were a choice it made of its own will. In the same way, the conclusions of the machines and the androids were also of their own will."

The scratching stops. Beepy has had 4000 years to practice this shape. It isn't a wonder it takes him no time at all. "Do you wish to destroy me, Unit 9S?"

"…No. It won't mean anything. It won't…bring anyone back."

"I am familiar with that feeling. Though I search for his name, I know that we will never meet again. All that remains of him is that promise. My self and my song. It is…painful at times. But that pain too, deserves life. At least, that is what I believe."

"And if you never find it?"

"Then I will I have struggled in the name of something precious to me to my final moment."

* * *

**31 January ** **11946 5:48 PM**

"Unit 9S, I believe the ants have found your lost component."

9S snaps out of hacking space. His systems are still in shambles and need more repair than he is equipped to perform, but the ability to do anything at all is its own reward. What Beep calls ants are tiny repair units similar to his own nanomachines. They are hard to see in the gloom, but he sees his own severed leg sliding toward him from further up in the junk piles.

He drags himself along the beam to reach it and braces himself. Unlike his arm, the reconnection of a leg is intense enough that he nearly loses consciousness. But he holds on, his breaths short and sharp as the pain subsides.

"You are looking better," Beepy says, as he scratches out another drawing.

"Not better enough to get out of this hole. My motor cortex is a mess, I'm just barely holding it together by diverting power reserved for combat routines. I tried waking pod up, but she's not responding, and I don't want to do anything drastic."

"You trust her actions."

Taking far too much time and concentration, 9S manages to get his fingers around the black shape and lift her enough to see her. "I do. She took care of me when I didn't want to be taken care of."

"I see."

9s sets her in his lap. Beepy's repair units are not equipped to complete his maintenance. He is at a loss. "You know, with my hacking online I could probably look in your memory banks for your friend's name."

Beepy laughs. It's an odd, halting sort of sound. "You are not equipped to interface with me, Unit 9S. I shed that functionality long ago."

"Didn't I interface with you before?"

"Only when I sang. It is not the same thing. You existed outside of us."

9S remembers that part, but he isn't convinced. There must be something to it. Something he can do. Come to think of it, Beepy hasn't sang since then...

A flicker interrupts his thoughts. The orange color is distinct, even in the pit. Pod 153's emergency signal has activated.

"Pod?" 9S calls frantically. "Pod 153?!"

An abrasive voice answers, not from the pod, but from above. "Holy hell, you're actually still alive!"

"Griffon?" 9S totters too quickly to his feet and neatly trips over a rusted beam.

The blue eagle cackles and even though 9S hates that sound, it's the best thing he's heard in days. "Nice demonstration of how you got down here, dipshit. Man, wait'll I tell V you're not dead!"

9S picks himself up with renewed fervor. "V is here?"

"Sure. Soda-can picked up a distress signal like three weeks ago and the gang's all here. But you understand he ain't comin' down to see you; boss man's even less built to get out of here than you are right now." He spreads his wings and takes off the surface. His voice echoes down with rare sincerity: "If you got a plan, now's the time to think about it, cause I can't carry you."

9S stares up at the pinpoint of light above, with his pod still clutched in his arms. That single star that he cannot reach is where he has to go. If he doesn't figure out how, that's the end.

Behind him, there is a shift. Beepy is looking at him. "As you said to 'us', someone is waiting for you."

"Yeah... A really arrogant guy who acts like he has all the answers and constantly calls me a kid."

"You do not like him?"

"That's the weird part, I don't but I do. I could be dead right now, and if there's any place I could see 2B again, I'd be there. Instead I'm with him. I told myself that as long as he's alive, 2B's life wasn't for nothing. Her suffering, everything she did as 2E, it could all mean something if I just kept him safe. If I was useful to him. It's not like I don't know that someday he's going to leave, or he's going to die. I know I'm going to end up right back where I started. Alone."

His emotions are moving at thousands of miles per hours in a dozen opposing directions. His regulation is probably in the gutter with the rest of his functionality. It doesn't surprise him, and he doesn't try to fight it. Not when he begins to smile, or when he begins to cry.

"Even though I know it can't last… I really want to eat oranges with him again." A small, self-effacing laugh escapes him. The words are already leaving him by the time he realizes how much he sounds like Anthurium. "Isn't that just the most irrational thing you've ever heard?"

"Perhaps. But I have found that living is not a very rational process." Beepy rises to his feet and scoops 9S into the safety of his massive metal palms. "Let us live, Unit 9S."

The piles of scrap and junk that fill the pit and coat its floor rattle and rise. Beepy is full of surprises, 9S thinks, as he pulls old parts to his back with some kind of finely controlled electromagnetism and begins his ascent. 9S does not allow himself to be too enraptured by this display. Other parts are rattling off of Beepy's body, and it is clear his repairs have been allowed to languish in favor of working on 9S.

"You're gonna fall apart!"

"I will not die. The ants will repair me."

"But what if you lose your memory?" He grips Beepy's hand with his own lumbering fingers, yelling to be heard over the thrum of his scrap wings. "2B told me there's value in the you that exists at this moment! Connect to your network! Don't let this go!"

"But your interface—"

He knew it. "Just trust me!"

Beepy begins to sing. Even under the strange circumstances, is it a song of triumph—of the joy of being alive. It reaches out across the frequency that Beepy shares with themselves, sang back to him from somewhere far, far away.

9S feels his consciousness slip into that strange space, and gives himself to it. Again, he awakens in golden space. Now he understands that at the end of all those branches are individuals. Single lives that Beepy interfaced with, who chose to become themselves with him. The song is theirs too. They all exist within his framework.

9S is still outside of them. Alone. He cannot sing such a song yet. Instead, he cries out to them with everything inside of him.

_**"Please help me!"**_

His voice reaches them. They make way for him, pulling him through the corridors of Beepy's mind, and ushering him into its deepest places. Soon, he is alone. They cannot go where he goes. He runs along a darkened path illuminated by his experience, his skill, and his familiarity with this process.

Beepy has interfaced with androids, and machines, but never with a YoRHa.

And 9S is the best there is.

Fragments of burnt out memory flicker like the faint electrical signals in a dying unit. He catches one in his hands. Holds onto it even as it sizzles through his mind. Memories of a battle. Of metal wings beating against a metal ceiling. A shadowy creature with a gangly body kept close to him. On the floor with him. It's sorry. It tried so hard…

_"9S!"_

That familiar voice calls him back, snatching him out of the memory and out of the golden light into the cloudless January day. It takes him a moment to re-orient himself, but V is there. Standing stark in his black coat against the snow-blanketed landscape. 9S almost laughs, thinking that such a spoiled guy came so far.

Beepy extends his arms to let 9S down, and 9S feels them stuttering in their efforts. He is not clear of the pit, and his wings are failing. He will fall.

9S shouts. "His name was Kalil!"

Beepy's dial eyes flash bright. His song rings through 9S and through the mountain. It is not a mere frequency, but a melody that bounds through the emptiness like a child at play.

"Ka..lil! _Kalil!_ Together!"

His immense wings break from his back. He crashes through the chasm, rebounding off the walls in a booming din that causes the whole mountain to shudder.

9S watches from Shadow's back as they flee to a safe distance. With a vast groan of falling metal and earth, the mouth of the mountain collapses in on itself. A red-hued cloud of dirt and rust rise in its place.

"Are you alright, 9S?"

It feels like it's been a lifetime since he last saw V. There's a look of relief in his features. 9S thinks that whatever the reason—his resemblance to V's son, his utility, or even the off chance that V was genuinely worried—he is happy that V looked for him.

The strains of a tune touches 9S' consciousness. A golden host singing a beautiful song. Beepy wasn't dead. Unlike the machines, content to die when they found what it was they were looking for, Beepy has only returned to himself. They would sing forever, somewhere far from this world, with the name of the soul that gave him life held inside like the most precious treasure.

_Thank you, Unit 9S._

"Nines…"

Worry appears in V's eyes. To him, 9S must sound incoherent. "What?"

9S smiles and closes his eyes. Even he isn't sure which of them he is speaking to. He is only sure that he wants to sleep.

"You can…call me Nines…"

* * *

From the dreams 9S reported while undergoing maintenance at the resistance camp:

_The robot Beepy, who would pass down knowledge of the human soul and what it meant to live, lost himself and Kalil to a group of three. The first was a man with white hair who commanded a white book. The second was a woman with silver hair who battled with monstrous strength. The third was a grinning stone face atop a skeletal frame._

_Hypotheses:_

_The white book was the Grimoire known as 'Weiss' The white-haired man was one of the Originals 9S reports that gestalts did not look human. This man would have been the replicant. Emil was present for the destruction of Beepy and appears to have been a friend of the Original replicant._

_Additional item, insisted upon by Unit 9S upon his repair:_

_Commander Theta of the Army of Humanity bears a near-identical resemblance to the silver-haired woman in Beepy's memory._


	41. Snow and Ash - Side A

"THIS POD HAS NOTICED A LAPSE IN SUBJECT V'S ATTENTION. PROPOSAL: END REPORTS FOR TODAY."

The proposal lingered in the stale air, neither accepted nor refused. Pod 042's voice had faded away to white noise in the background of V's thoughts what felt like hours ago. Again he was pre-occupied with his memories, so clear and particular in their details. What fascinating details might he find if not for the amorphous unease that had come to occupy his mind alongside them?

Were he a more sentimental man, it might be tempting to think he was just that worried about 9S.

His restlessness coincided neatly with Pod 153's distress signal waking him from an already fitful sleep, and it had persisted for most of the long trek it took to reach the distant factory and for much of the trip back. All through the weeks it took to retrace their path, 9S had babbled intermittently in the throes of some mechanized fever dream. Troubling, with the knowledge that androids supposedly lacked the ability to dream. A rational debrief of what had happened to him out there had only come the day before, and only that morning had he finally finished his repairs and promised to head to the forest kingdom.

This brought V some relief, admittedly, but it had little bearing on the weight that pressed in on his stomach and crept along the bones of his spine. He kept recalling Vergil's moment at play, unaware that anything in the world was wrong while just on the edge of his horizon, the house was burning. Unpleasant a memory as it was, it should have lacked sufficient bite to perturb him.

Yet it wouldn't go away.

The familiar heavy knock of 9S' footsteps on the cobblestones reached through his preoccupied haze. He took a slow, readying breath, and pulled his fingers through his hair.

9S appeared in the doorway just as he was finding the action was a lot more involved than it once was. "It's getting long, huh?"

V let the question slip by. The mottled scarring around 9S' leg had smoothed, and all of the rust and filth had been washed away. In only a few days, he looked nearly new again.

"You don't have to eye me like that," he said. "I got the sword, just like I said."

V smirked. "Quite overdue."

"I did offer to stay until it was done."

"I may have taken you up on it if I knew you'd end up making a sabbatical of it. How fortunate that the god you found was rather more benevolent." He smiled easily, momentarily forgetting the sickly feeling that gnawed at him. "It's good to see you well."

9S nodded energetically, his smile somehow even sunnier than before. He raised his palms and the sword materialized in a brief pop of sparks. "I checked to be sure the data was all unlocked properly, but I didn't read any of it."

V stared down his nose at the offering. Here again was another tether to the man he might or might not be; a line to dark years when neither of them were their own master. No mere nightmare this time, but a very real metal eyesore whose every line spoke to him in languages he only hoped he had forgotten. He willed himself still, willed his mouth silent, willed himself steady as he struggled with sickly memories of being strung up like a fly in the web of a spider. The description of the weapon rose in mind, as sharp as when he'd first read it.

A sword forged in hell, wielded by a demonic knight known as The Black Angel.

The bile climbing through him receded, leaving only a sheen of sweat to say it was ever there.

9S was watching him, his expression relaxed and patient. As though he understood something important and difficult was happening between V and the sword he only knew by the false name someone had bestowed it.

He had no idea, and V realized with a prickling at the back of his neck that he didn't either.

"I appreciate your discretion," he said finally, gesturing to the wall with his cane. "Leave it there. Though I hate to cut our meeting short, I think it would be best if I held my reunion with this sword in private."

"Sure," said 9S, wiping his hands off on his coat once the sword had been set down. Did he feel something from it? Or was V's discomfort so strong that it had rubbed off on him? "I'll go get some supplies. You're probably sick of having to do it yourself."

He denied the jab the dignity of a response and ran his fingers through his hair again.

"Do you want me to just cut that?"

V looked up with a blank expression. 9S was hovering just at the edge of the doorway, looking somewhat expectantly at V's hair. "You'll forgive me if I doubt that you can do so to any worthwhile effect."

"Just this once, I'll give you that." He grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Scanners were the only male models, and not that many of us were made. There was kind of a lot of incentive for us to master our own nonessential grooming routines."

That was quite possibly the most mundane, timelessly human thing V had ever heard him say.

"Come on," 9S urged. "My memory's basically one long recording. I can make it look just like it did when you got here."

"How do you propose to—" From his pockets, 9S produced a small but surprisingly clean pair of scissors. V's brows drew. "And you have scissors because…?"

He gestured them toward V's coat, draped over the metal frame of a chair in the corner. "Did you think I just hacked up a bunch of leather with my sword or something?"

V drummed his fingers at his cane. He couldn't shake the feeling that 9S was perhaps more interested in this than he should be. Restless nerves gave his imagination amusing but highly unlikely explanations; the boy's attachment to humanity leaned more toward doting than unsettling physical keepsakes. Perhaps it was just a novelty to him, or another hastily thought up means of being helpful...

He brushed his reservations away as a consequence of the sword hanging over his mood like a guillotine and hooked himself a chair to sit in. It was becoming a bother, and if 9S wanted to cut it, they should just get on with it.

A bolt of self-preserving instinct shot through him the moment he felt an unfamiliar touch slip between his nape and his collar and heard the metallic shift of the scissors. He clamped down on it, but not quickly enough to avoid 9S' notice. There was a pause, then a quick series of snips. A tickle of hairs falling down the loose resistance shirt. The android moved around him and quite conscientiously did the rest of the job where V could see him. Given how easily he took it upon himself to move V's head to his wishes, he didn't seem to regard the act as personal. And why should he? V himself hadn't realized how much of his trust it would require until he was faced with the reality of it.

Vergil didn't like to be touched. Whether due to his own disposition or because he had to work so closely with others, it didn't manifest often in V, but apparently he was not so free of that aversion as he'd assumed.

"Done," 9S said proudly, immediately drawing back to a polite distance. "Sorry if I spooked you at the start. I didn't think you'd be uncomfortable."

"Neither did I." V idly brushed loose hair from his shoulders, and pushed his hair back a third, more experimental time. He didn't care enough to actually check his appearance—it felt right, and that would be enough until after he finished his business with the sword. "I don't have much experience with this sort of thing."

It sounded more vague and sentimental than he'd meant it. 9S, luckily, didn't seem to latch onto the implication. He'd crossed his arms and tilted his head, in the way he did when something failed to add up.

"You never cut Nero's hair?"

The cane slipped from V's fingers. The clatter as it struck the floor was thunderous, yet it made all the impression of a pin dropping in the silence as they stared at one another. 9S with his wide eyes and dropped jaw, frozen in place on the realization that he'd put his foot so far into his mouth he was probably already digesting it; and V with his mind blank and his eyes on the loose white strands of 9S' hair.

"I only ever saw Nero with his hair short."

He bent to retrieve his cane and stood, keeping his eyes firmly on the sword leaned against the wall. He had no idea what kind of face he was making, only that a shame he had only ever associated with defeat was burning him alive from the inside out. "You should go."

9S footsteps tapped a stilted rhythm toward the door and paused. "I know the coat makes you sweat, but it's supposed to snow. So…Take care."

V pressed his lips to a thin crease, and waited for the android's footsteps to fade away. Soon enough, it was just him and the sword and the insistent visions of sunlight and bright, puffy clouds. The bottom of a hill carpeted in long but neatly kept grasses and pocked with flowers. A playground he was beginning to outgrow. A child's mind full of a child's cares, no more and no less.

"ALERT: SPIKE DETECTED IN SUBJECT V'S SURFACE TEMPERATURE."

"Pod," Griffon rumbled, as he materialized atop one of the wobbly mesh tables snatched from the boulevard. "Not now, buddy."

The nightmare eagle was watching the weapon just as intently as V was. In spite of the clumsy situation that preceded this one, he offered no quips and no commentary. Nelo Angelo's sword had no life of its own, but it was realer than any of the demons contracted to V; a nightmare which would exist regardless of whether anyone observed it or not.

V set his cane carefully below the window, and exchanged it for the sword. It was cold. Inert. It could have been any hunk of metal in the world. Unlike the Sparda, the only resistance it offered as he tried to lift it was its physical weight. It wasn't a devil arm. While it had been hell-forged, it had no soul of its own, and like his nightmares it could only feed on the one who held it.

Faint blue light flickered along its dulled symbols. It was responding to him. _Remembering_ him.

"Disgusting…" He let the edge rest against the floor and held a hand up just beneath Pod 042. "Show me."

The screen clicked open.

**My mother's robes were poppy red.**

**In gray ash, I lose my innocence.**

**My sword and strength protect me among a sea of red.**

**On white streets, I lose my faith.**

**My arrogance brings me before three eyes of red.**

**In black armor, I lose my will.**

**My only treasure, my divine hate, wears our mother's red.**

**To a silver blade, I lose this foolish life.**

V's breaths deepened. Slowed. There was nowhere for this feeling to go, so he held his ghosts down and dispassionately drowned them.

They're only memories, he told himself. But that gut reaction—that instinct to put the unbearable out of mind and focus on literally anything else—was Vergil's. And he wasn't Vergil.

It did not matter if they were only memories. They were _his_ memories, given words as if from _his_ mouth, put in poetry with _his_ voice, _his_ turns of phrase, as though he had put it there himself when he hadn't. If such a reading of his heart had ever been penned by his own hand he would never have left such that memoir in this_ thing_—an obscene sword to match the obscene gift of 'freedom' from the demon who took his mother, his home, and then in a final insult even took him from himself.

Yet here it was. Bearing his thoughts like whispers gathered from a confessional. Only someone aware of what this sword meant to him could have given it a name so infinitely insulting as 'Humility'.

_"Beware, O Proud. Thou shalt be humbled."_

Griffon twitched. "Uhh…V?"

The sword's faint cobalt glow surged to hot amethyst. V released it, but it was a mere receptacle for the energy that sweltered inside of him, pushing back the blackened curls of his tattoos and filling their empty paths with pale light. Griffon's feathers lit the same, and he managed a strangled squawk before he vanished. Blood rushed in V's ears, but his heart no longer seemed to beat so much as it pulsed. He doubled over, panic and fear pushing through the surge to seek him only be scorched away before it ever reached him.

Blackened talons flared from his fingers. Scales followed; each one a tiny burst of agony like new teeth crowning from his flesh. The faded shadows of his tattoos weaved and swirled between them liked rivers eroding vast mountains. White-violet sparks leaped from his skin.

Though he didn't understand how, he did understand what was happening to him.

He had to get away from there.

Without a second thought he lifted Nelo Angelo's sword. His talons were too long and made clumsy work of it, but it weighed almost nothing as he swung it. The brickwork gave way like paper and the window shattered. It might have been pleasant to remember what such power felt like under any other circumstance, but he could already see the scales failing, weakly fighting to spread without meaningful progress. Dizziness made clouds of his thoughts and only the incessant tickle of sweat on every patch of him that still boasted skin kept him grounded in his own body.

Getting to the ground turned out to be more a matter of falling than leaping. In his desperation to escape he had forgotten just how weak the structure was, and the ancient wood yielded beneath him as he limped toward the threshold, spilling him down onto the first floor.

Unstable violet magic surged from his body in dancing lines of plasma that licked the rotted planks and set them alight. His scales and claws snapped out of existence as though they were never there to begin with, the pain of their retreat enough to draw a cry from him where their emergence had failed.

As he thought. Devil trigger was too much for his body to take.

He dragged himself through the empty ground floor window and threw himself to the cobblestones as smoke began to rise. The glass cut him, but drew no blood. He was a mere construct again, crumbling and on the verge of death after using power far too great for him. Yet even as he stared at his fingers in a daze, the cracks slowly closed. Blood began to ooze from wounds where pieces of him had simply broken off. Skin that was smooth and supple and human replaced the flaking dust.

A heave from deep in his gut forced him up into a feverish stumble. He found his way into an alley on the opposite side of the boulevard and clutched at the brick, bent and shuddering as his stomach emptied. Blood and salt spilled onto the stone, all pink-stained crystals and dark red fluid.

The maso. The gods. They still—

He collapsed. For the first time in days he felt the chill of the on-going winter. The permeating heat had gone, and it was all he could do to lay shivering on the ground like a newborn.

A coat settled over him. It stank of smoke, but it was his. He squinted up through bleary vision and saw Pod 042 hovering close at his side. 9S shouldn't know. 9S _couldn't_ know. But V could not force the words from his mouth.

His mind was full of sunlight. He stood at the top of the hill, at the playground where he would go. Poppy red robes swayed at his side. A bracelet peeked from a black sleeve, on her right. Always on her right.

Through a mouth clogged with the taste of brine and iron, he croaked. "Mo…ther…"

On the other side of the boulevard, the house burned.

* * *

_Report on Unit 10H and the Moon Server, compiled by Pod 042:_

_The Moon Server on the surface of the moon was an unmanned base constructed around a pre-existing server containing the remnants of the human genome from the Gestalt Project. Android compiled any and all additional data regarding mankind in this base._

_This structure became the basis of the Council of Humanity. The broadcasts only ever existed to convince androids that Humanity had survived in secret._

_During YoRHa's active period, the server was assigned a special pod to maintain the remnants of humanity's data. It was also assigned a single YoRHa android to manage the facility: Number 10, Healer Type. Unit 10H._

_**Note: Due to risk of drawing the attention of the Wide-range Pod Network, status of Unit 10H was not confirmed despite Subject V's request. All related entries were subsequently sealed.**_


	42. Snow and Ash - Side B

Despite all his reading on the nature of demons and devils, it had never really clicked for 9S that Hell was a real place. Not until Masamune ominously warned that the Humility was only meant to be used by a demon.

It wasn't new information—the weapon description said exactly who the sword belonged to and where it had been made. He'd always sort of taken the old world weapon's descriptors for granted. Some of them were so strange and cruel that they couldn't possibly be anything but ancient fables. Humility's description was literal, if Griffon's reaction was anything to go by, and 9S turned that thought over a dozen times between the forest kingdom and the amusement park.

V's family hunted demons. If it was a demon's weapon, it had to have been a demon he knew, or had fought before. The Black Angel had to be an enemy of his. Maybe even the one that had killed his mother. There was no other explanation for how his demeanor had changed since discovering it. The man he'd come to understand as dry and exasperatingly composed whenever he wasn't busy being smug suddenly had more in common with a barely restrained boar.

The two lines of data he knew from his initial interactions with Humility pulled at his attention like a bad joint drawing the absent touch of a hand. Android-made weapons acted as data storage in the more traditional sense. Logs, protocols, reports—things like that. Old world weapons told stories and held thoughts, usually related to the weapon's wielders. Usually, as in not always. Subject Yonah was known to have been sickly. It was safe to assume she hadn't been the one using that old Iron Pipe even though it was full of her thoughts.

It all made sense if he just stopped picking at how strange it was for V's mother and the fire to be the very first subject.

What else was in there? What story was the sword trying to tell? V's search for some kind of clue that had begun on the sinking coast nearly six months ago had finally turned something up, and everything about it from the data to the way it supposedly fell out of the sky fascinated 9S. If he just took a little peek at the rest of the data…

No. It wasn't some stray data out in the middle of nowhere. Those were V's memories.

He took the stairs two at a time, and caught V struggling to pull his fingers through his hair. "It's getting long, huh?"

V turned and scrutinized him without answering. He liked to pace when he was thinking—9S had watched him do it for hours and had every whimsical step and idle cane trick memorized. But he was still as a statue, all of his carelessly flowing actions bound tight.

"You don't have to eye me like that," said 9S. "I got the sword, just like I said."

"Quite overdue."

9S squinted. He knew this game. "I did offer to stay until it was done."

"I may have taken you up on it if I knew you'd end up making a sabbatical of it. How fortunate that the god you found was rather more benevolent." Some of the tension faded, enough for V to lean onto his cane and smile in his quietly satisfied way. "It's good to see you well."

9S beamed.

V had said once that he would take steps to repair 9S if it came to that. It was a long time ago. 9S understood perfectly well that V's concerns at the time were different—strictly about keeping him in a useful state. However much V might insist otherwise, that had changed. Losing or damaging his trust was a way worse prospect than not knowing what was on the sword.

Humility materialized in a brief pop of sparks, weighing heavily on his hands. "I checked to be sure the data was all unlocked properly, but I didn't read any of it."

What little their interaction had done to loosen V was snatched back into crossed arms and rigid posture. His jacket was off—not too strange, he was always quick to describe how stuffy it was—but fresh sweat was beading on his skin. If 9S had stepped forward, V might have taken a step back.

"I appreciate your discretion." He made a stiff gesture at the wall. "Leave it there. Though I hate to cut our meeting short, I think it would be best if I held my reunion with this sword in private."

"Sure," said 9S, gladly setting it aside. Unconsciously he rubbed his hands against his coat. If V was afraid of it, maybe he shouldn't be so casual about touching it either.

"I'll go get some supplies." He ambled toward the door, peeking mischievously back. "You're probably sick of having to do it yourself." V didn't answer, but he did smile and run his fingers through his hair again. It really was getting long. "Do you want me to just cut that?"

The creases vanished from V's forehead, his eyebrows rising. "You'll forgive me if I doubt that you can do so to any worthwhile effect."

"Just this once, I'll give you that." He grinned and shoved his hands into his pockets. "Scanners were the only male models, and not that many of us were made. There was kind of a lot of incentive for us to master our own nonessential care routines."

And each other's for that matter. Most androids were particular about their appearance, but he was far from the only scanner with harmless grooming quirks. They all took care of each other, if they couldn't take care of themselves. Not something V needed exactly, but the least 9S wanted to do was the favor of giving V one less thing to think about. He would properly thank V for coming to get him, of course, but it felt like now wasn't the best time.

"Come on," he said. "My memory's basically one long recording. I can make it look just like it did when you got here."

"How do you propose to—"

9S was way ahead of him, producing a small pair of scissors he'd been gifted by one of the clown machines.

V was giving him the same exasperated look as when he'd first learned the pods could fish. "And you have scissors because…?"

He smugly jabbed them toward V's coat. "Did you think I just hacked up a bunch of leather with my sword or something?"

As soon as V gave his wordless agreement, he hurried to get on task before he changed his mind. There was a brief moment of a very different kind of tension when he approached—a subtle jerk that 9S recognized as an aborted defensive maneuver. V could be finicky about personal space; was he not used to people being behind him?

He'd make it quick, then. Just a few minor calculations to maximize his efficiency and the process was practically automatic. Making it look the same as before was nothing compared to the things the other scanners used to ask for. 801S had the longest hair among scanners and insisted on a hundred brush strokes every 24 hour cycle, 32S liked his hair trimmed to some weirdly precise measurement and always looked like dandelion puff, 4S liked to dye his hair even though he was constantly getting in trouble for it; there was even a time when 1S became popular because he would only do his hair with combs he hand-carved on Earth and it caught on with other models.

It dawned on him that they had also probably been assigned E units at some point.

"Done," he said, glad to have a reason to not think about that. And not a bad job, at that. "Sorry if I spooked you at the start. I didn't think you'd be uncomfortable."

"Neither did I." V brushed himself off and pushed his hair back a third time. "I don't have much experience with this sort of thing."

9S slowly crossed his arms. How could he not have much experience with something like a haircut? It grew just fine, so someone had to have cut it before. If not his parents, then at least his brother. And he had a son…

"You never cut Nero's hair?"

The cane struck the floor with a heavy clang.

9S's eyes widened and he felt his mouth opening and closing uselessly. He messed up. He really messed up. It was more than the dazed look in V's wide eyes or the way his fingers twitched over his necklace, or even the flush of red that engulfed his cheeks.

It was the way he broke eye contact first. How his gaze floated up as if pulled by magnetism to 9S' hair and lingered there.

"I only ever saw Nero with his hair short."

A shock of cold went through 9S. What did that mean? What had happened to Nero? He had only ever said that he had a son, but that it was complicated, and he was suddenly ravenous to know. But he was pinned like a bug by that look. V saw Nero in him. He also saw the ways 9S wasn't Nero.

V didn't look at him as he retrieved his cane, or as he stood. His voice was low and careful. "You should go."

Even now, he thought of V's white hair atop the cliff and his body felt so light.

"I know the coat makes you sweat, but it's supposed to snow. So…" He swallowed. He had no right to be hurt. It made a hypocrite of him. "Take care."

* * *

There was a human saying that 'you couldn't go home again' that 9S had never managed to parse, but he thought he got the principle of it now.

The empty office building was barren as ever, but there were still traces that they had been there for most of autumn. A smear of ash here and withered clover there, and a faint nostalgia all throughout. True, he didn't want to go back to V immediately after running his errands, but he couldn't have explained why he had come back here of all places or why he was content to stare out the window at the cloud-muted ruins.

Boring and long as the days were, maybe he just missed when nothing was happening.

"INCOMING RESISTANCE TRANSMISSION," Pod announced.

9S rolled his eyes, and sighed dramatically as it picked up. "I'm fine, Pine. Still have all my scanner parts attached and everything."

An unexpectedly gentle laugh answered. "Glad to hear it, 9S."

"Oh, A-Anemone!" He stood upright. "Sorry, Pine's repair routines were really exhaustive, and I thought—never mind that; did you need something? A favor?"

"No. The dig turned something up. I'd like you to swing by the camp." She hesitated. Her voice was matter of fact, but compassionate. "I think you're the most qualified to decide what happens to it."

The transmission ended. The camp wasn't far, and his body moved on auto-pilot to get there. Light as ever in spite of how his thoughts had all turned to solid lead. He knew it had to be YoRHa-related. He didn't want to think about how, or exactly what he was about to be faced with.

When he walked into the camp, his mind was blank and braced. Anemone stood dead center in the middle of the site, awaiting him with crossed arms.

9S had never thought anything of the patch of flowers in the center of the resistance camp. They were tended and enclosed, in the sort of haphazard way that suggested a lack of time and resources. There wouldn't have been any flowers in bloom at this time of year anyway, but the absence of them combined with Anemone's unusual position drew his eye.

The dirt was freshly turned. A single withered rose lay faded but unmissable atop the dark brown soil.

A grave.

His pulse began to rise. He tried to smile. "The suspense is killing me."

Her face pinched. From the folds of her moss-colored cloak, she produced a sword.

The steel reflected his face on an edge that glimmered such a pure silver-white that 9S fleetingly doubted his memories. It seemed beyond belief that such an immaculate sword could never have been stained by blood—if only some of that blood had not been his. That blade had taken everything from him. His life, his memories. Time and time again.

"That's... 2B's sword..."

Anemone nodded, and held it out to him, no differently than he had held Humility out only a little while ago. Painful longing and world dimming fear warred for supremacy, charging up and down his nerve sensors until his breath stopped and he went numb inside his own body.

He took it. Not because he wanted it, but because Anemone was right. Whatever he did with it, Virtuous Contract didn't belong with anyone in this world more than it belonged with him.

His gaze fell back to the grave, and he held the sword closer to his chest. "That's where she's buried, isn't it?"

"A2's body was never found during tower clean up."

They weren't even half-way done, but her tone was a flat and emotionless and fully conveyed that she expected him to repeat that lie to anyone who asked for as long as he lived. He had a sneaking suspicion she probably knew he was to blame for the similar disappearance of the twins. It didn't matter. A2 didn't mean anything to him anymore. If Anemone cared enough to make a grave for her, he wouldn't disturb it.

"Understood."

She nodded, and with an unusually hesitant hand, reached out to squeeze his shoulder. Without a word, she left him standing there, and without a word he drifted back out the way he came. Snow was beginning to fall in fluffy, feathery clumps. Puffs of steam rose as he stood there, his mind blank not for careful emptiness but for a flood of thoughts that had all blended together into static.

It would have been the simplest thing to let the NFCS activate and take care of the sword's transport, but even when Pod 153 broke the silence to suggest it, he only held it tighter. He didn't want it out of his sight or out of his hands for even a second, nor did he want to be able to interface with it at all. Whatever memories or thoughts were on it, he wasn't ready to know. To even imagine.

"Submit a private-channel inquiry to Pod 042," he said dimly. "I'll find…something to do if V's not done."

Her antennae receded, and a series of tinny clicks rebounded inside her case. A brief silence followed, and the pattern repeated.

"…CONNECTION FAILED."

9S looked up at her, dumbfounded. "What?"

"THIS POD COULD NOT ESTABLISH A CONNECTION TO TACTICAL SUPPORT UNIT POD 042."

The static snowing through his mind parted. The private channel was for pod-to-pod communication only. Nobody used it but them. And he was the only in the zone with active pods.

The pulse of his blackbox increased. "Put Pod 042's current location on the map."

"…NEGATIVE. POD 042 IS OFFLINE."

He ran.

Through the stream, over the frozen earth, and onto the broken road, turning the corner and deftly activating pod's bomb program on the barrier between the city and the park. Wood and sheet metal and barbed wires scattered, and he crashed through, not even slowing down as flying shrapnel scratched him open in a dozen places.

A crowd of the park's machines huddled around the golden rabbit statue, staring at the murky smoke rising from southwestern quarter and the smoldering glow flickering off the ferris wheel. He pushed through them, racing down the thoroughfares and through the alleys until the snow blackened with ash and eventually began to fall as filthy rain.

The room he had left V in had already collapsed. The fire had taken all it could and moved on, leaving a charred husk filled with dying cinders in favor of devouring the rest of the avenue. Broken glass littered the cobblestones. V's cane was lying among it, its owner nowhere to be seen. 9S could not even bend to pick it up. There was too much noise, too much chaos—flying machines screaming in their metallic voices as they tried to put out the fire before it had the chance to hop the canal and destroy another quadrant of the park. The fire roaring on, virtuous contract cutting into his fingers as he gripped the unguarded blade too tightly.

He was too late. Just like he had been for 2B.

"Stop it," he hissed at himself, and snatched the cane up. Proximity to the fire had left it hot to the touch, but it had not been scorched. Meaning it had been outside before the fire did its worst. V did not leave his cane anywhere, and Pod 042 would not have left V. They had to have made it out.

9S wasn't going to believe anything else until he saw a body.

"Find something," he commanded. He was speaking more to himself than to Pod 153, but she responded.

"AFFIRMATIVE. TRACE SIGNATURE OF LOCAL ELECTROMAGNETIC ACTIVITY IDENTIFIED. MARKING LOCATION."

The roller coaster platform.

He took several shortcuts, bowling through boarded up windows and rotted doors wherever he could. Pod did not issue him any warnings about his body or the dubious structural integrity of the buildings. They both knew he would not have listened.

The first thing to catch his eye when he clambered over the pile of debris was the mattress. Stark white, sitting dead center in the courtyard. Pod 042 was toppled over beside it, his claws frozen as if in rigor mortis. His antennae did not flash, and there was no faint whine of his emergency signal.

9S paced rapidly around him, looking around for any sign of V. "If he can be re-activated, do it."

"REPORT: SYSTEM FAILURE DUE TO ELECTROMAGNETIC DISRUPTION. REBOOTING…"

In only a few maddening seconds of silence, Pod 042 jerked sluggishly back to life. 9S had a dozen questions, but none of them were more important than the immediate one.

"Where's V?"

"UNKNOWN. THIS POOO—D-D-D" His voice slurred to a syrupy growl and he lost a bit of his altitude. His case clicked open and shut, like a beetle settling its wings and his antennae spun. "THIS POD ATTEMPTED RELOCATION DUE TO THE SPREAD OF THE FIRE. SUBJECT V WAS INCAPACITATED DUE TO AN UNKNOWN REACTION FROM HUMILITY."

That explained the mattress. Without an interface Pod would have had to physically lift V, but with such small pincers he may as well have tried to lift him with tweezers. "Did Griffon not help you?"

"NEGATIVE. SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON WAS NON-RESPONSIVE."

9S's gut wrenched. Whether V slept or passed out or was sick, Griffon was always there to protect him. Their lives were bound, he had to. The world spun. His breaths heaved in quick bursts, even as his jaws clenched tight enough to make his teeth groan and creak

"Where did the EMP come from?" he rumbled. His grip tightened around 2B's sword in one fist and V's cane in the other. Either would do. "A machine? An android?"

The two pods turned toward one another. They had the audacity to have a compressed conversation right in front of him, and he bit his lip until it split to keep himself contained. Maybe they were just trying to think fast. Think him out of this dead end where again he was alone and the place he thought he could be at ease was burned and the person he cared for was dead gone.

They had to know as well as he did that he couldn't go through this again.

A notification pinged on his interface. A map marker, way out on the edge of the park where it touched the coast. He didn't know his way there, but the roller coaster made a nice high point to jump from and skip the run.

He landed on a stretch of broken down concrete piers worn to sea-smoothed stones by the tide. A few wilted balloons sagged from the remains of metal posts, but there was no evidence of machine presence. There was no evidence of any presence. Just a rundown shack peeking out from beneath the skeletal frame of the coaster's tracks.

Nowhere along the spectrum between the very best and very worst his imagination had to offer would have come even close to preparing him to open that door. For a moment he was so caught up in the weirdness of the scene he failed to absorb that he had found what he was looking for.

V's hair was white. All of his tattoos were faded to the color of pale ash. 9S dropped down, the sword and cane dropping out of his grasp as he shook V furiously. "V? V, are you alright?!"

V groaned and pushed ineffectually at 9S' face. "**Stop**. My head…"

"Sorry, sorry, just—" He heaved a long, shuddering sigh, like an engine finally releasing its steam, and hugged V without thinking. "I'm glad you're okay…"

V didn't freeze up, and didn't immediately push him away. When he did, 9S could feel how little strength he had, but his eyes were wary and sharp. "Were you not the one who brought me here?"

9S slowly shook his head. He kept close as they both took in the unsettling eccentricities of the shack.

V was sprawled out on an entire pile of pelts and pillows, his coat and three more like it layered over him like blankets. A dozen oranges were arranged in a perfect circle around him. They were also scattered on every single one of the pieces of furniture that had been carefully arranged to look like a normal human living room. 9S could tell some had started to go bad by the sweetly rotten scent that filled his head every time he breathed.

"I think we should go…" he whispered.

"I don't think it matters whether or not we go," said V. He rose to his feet, leaning heavily on 9S and his cane as he faltered toward a glass bowl carefully filled with a pyramid of oranges. At the peak of the citrusy altar, something glittered. A gold, diamond-shaped object with very realistic relief of some kind of animal eye in it. V picked it up, his expression harsh in the half-light.

9S' eyes moved frantically between it and V. "What is that?"

"Like me, a thing that should not be here," he said raggedly. He crushed it in his hand, and the color came back to both his tattoos and his hair in a swell of violet energy. He stood tall and straight, his expression dour and imperious as he rolled his shoulders. His voice came back as smooth and composed as it had ever been. "The one who brought me here knows I am not an android."

"I know." V raised a brow at him. "They used an EMP on Pod 042 before they carried you off. If they thought you were an android, and the goal was to keep you safe…"

"They would not have risked it," V completed. He looked darkly amused by the situation. In the same way he had before he'd summoned Nightmare on the dinosaur machine. "I am curious…How did you find me?"

9S looked to the pods, and V followed his gaze. Both were quiet. "V asked a question."

The pods turned to one another in silent communication and turned back. In perfect unison, they answered:

"REPORT: A BLACK BOX SIGNAL WAS DETECTED IN THIS AREA."


	43. Dream's End

Soot clung to the underbellies of the clouds, coloring them drab, ominous grays that would have fit an oncoming summer thunderstorm. The burned brick, soaked by snowfall and canal water, was just as bleak. After exposure to so many harsh elements, the charred, soggy innards of their winter hideaway were almost unrecognizable.

In the heat of the moment, when he didn't know where V was or if he was even still alive, it had felt so much like seeing the Bunker go down again. Now that the panic had passed, 9S found he was mostly annoyed with the loss of the hard day's work it had taken to clean the place out.

"You okay in there?" he called.

Griffon shouted something foul back, so yes, he was fine.

At the outer edge of 9S' visual field, V stared at the husk of the building without seeing it. His fingers drummed at his cane, but his expression was turned inward. He had been like that ever since he awakened. Locked up in his own head. 9S couldn't decide if it was Humility that preoccupied him or being abducted and taken to that creepy shack on the pier.

Without thinking, he reached out and grasped tightly at the side of V's coat.

The drumming of V's fingers paused. "I'm alright, 9S."

"Are you?" He cocked his head and peered at V's face. "You slept a long time again."

"To the contrary, I slept a very short time given the magnitude of what occurred."

"Yeah, well, you haven't really filled me in on that part," 9S said sourly.

V's eyes dropped down to briefly meet his and slid to the white katana 9S still clutched in his arms. "My magic was siphoned away." Without lingering on it, he returned his gaze forward. "Human blood is a source of power for the infernal. Let us say the sword was much better at digesting me than the gods were."

9S grimaced and rubbed at his arm. It was easier to get the response than he expected, and now he wished he hadn't asked. "You really don't know how to talk about things that nearly kill you without making a joke of it do you?"

V smirked. "The fool is always made evident in the moment of my survival."

From above, Griffon barked. "Any other time I'd be with you, V, but I'm not real fond of the whole bit where you were on your last legs!" He flew down with Humility in his claws, and V took it gingerly. "Try not to burn the place down again."

A faint glow filtered through the symbols engraved in the metal, in the same lilac color as V's magic. Nothing happened, and it quickly subsided. Maybe it was…full.

Despite his claim that the sword had essentially tried to drink him and even his light-fingered touch on the handle, V's expression was preoccupied again. There was a lot that he wasn't saying about what happened after 9S left, and Humility's data would undoubtedly have filled in all the blanks. But V had forbidden him from touching it. It would be even more of a betrayal of V's trust now than before.

9S stole another sidelong glance at V and rubbed his thumb against the ornate black sword collar of 2B's katana. V hadn't asked him about it, and 9S hadn't volunteered anything. In his mind, and maybe more importantly in his heart, he knew that Humility and Virtuous Contract were equals. Weapons with heavy histories that were hard to face, and would probably be even harder to share. But he hoped it didn't last. It was one thing for them to be private, and another entirely for both of them to be hiding things in plain sight.

"INCOMING RESISTANCE TRANSMISSION," said Pod 153.

9S rubbed at his face and darted into a nearby alley. "Yeah?"

"Geez, what moose pissed in your boots?"

Jackass. Possibly the person he wanted to talk to least in the world. He sighed. Cheery wasn't viable right now, but he could manage neutral at least. "It's nothing. Do you need something?"

"Yeah, I'd like you to meet me on top of the old goliath. I wanna pick your brain about something."

His eyes dropped as he tried to think of something he could say that would get him out of going. Another weird science experiment was the last thing he needed. Right now, all he wanted was to stay with V.

His eyes fell on something on the ground. A pile of white grains with an unusual ruddy residue that looked like rust. Momentarily forgetting the transmission, he bent down and pinched a bit between his fingers. The rusty stuff flaked over his gloves. He had never seen any this fine but the structure of the crystals almost looked like—

His throat tightened.

"9S, you there?"

"Yes!" He quickly rubbed his fingers off and whipped his head over his shoulder to make sure V hadn't seen him. "I'm here. I'm on my way. I'll be there soon. Bye!"

The transmission ended and 9S pressed himself back against the brickwork. His breaths oscillated wildly between breathing too quickly and not breathing at all.

Salt.

Salt and dried blood and he didn't need to think to know that both had come from V. Why now? It had been months! Humility—Humility drained V's blood or magic or whatever and maybe it really was magic that had allowed V to beat white chlorination, only he was never actually cured. It was still there the whole time. He was still sick; of course the gods didn't need to call him when they were in the forest kingdom, they still had him.

Worse, there was a strong possibility V didn't know. He showed no sign of concern about bringing 9S near the alley and hadn't reacted to 9S ducking into it. Human memory was terrible. If he was so delirious after what Humility did to him that he thought 9S was the one who carried him to the shack, it wasn't far fetched that he might not remember whatever led to this.

With a deep breath, he rounded the corner. Humility dangled in V's hand like a second, much more unwieldy cane. 9S tried not to wince. "So, what's your plan for that thing now? You gonna…carry it with you?"

"I could not hope to even if I did not loathe it," said V, with a puzzled look. "I will find a place for it where it will not be disturbed. When I do, that is where it will stay."

"Great!" 9S cleared his throat and tried again with a little more volume control. This was bad. Everything kept happening so damn fast, one thing after another, his self-regulation was starting to fail. "Really, that's great, I just—worry. About you."

"I had noticed." He pulled himself out of his own thoughts long enough to actually look at 9S and not just through him. "Are you alright?"

A tattered and weary laugh fluttered up from his chest like an escaped moth. "Not at all. I thought I lost you again. But it's fine—you're fine. I'll be fine." He took another deep breath. He was usually so good at keeping a lid on things, but he really couldn't tell where he was in the situation anymore. He was glad that V was alive but everything else around that one kernel of fantastic news was chaos.

He hadn't even begun to unpack the matter of the surviving YoRHa android. Whoever they were, they had made a conscious decision to bail out of the pods' detection range. That said Scanner to him, and every time he had to curb his own hopes. If it was 4S, he wouldn't have avoided 9S. There was no data, so who knew what kind of model it was? Another goddamn thing he had to think about.

"Jackass called and I want to see what she's got." He looked uncertainly up and down the open street. "I know you don't like it when I worry, but… Is there somewhere you can go that's safe?"

"Re-capture would be a difficult prospect with me awake, but if you insist." V glanced over the skyline of the park and pointed his cane at the ferris wheel. "There. High ground."

9S uncoiled, just enough for a deep sigh that wasn't nearly as much of a relief as he wanted it to be. "Ok... I'll be back soon."

* * *

_"SUBJECT V," said Pod 042. "THIS POD WISHES TO INITIATE A PRIVATE CONVERSATION."_

_"Glad to hear it," said V. "I was going to suggest the same."_

* * *

9S hadn't paid much attention to the contents of the crater recently. Most of the snow that had fallen over the long winter was perfectly preserved atop the towerfall, and the already harsh whiteness of every surface was amplified to innumerable eye-watering needles of icy light when the sun shone. The only sanctuary was the shadow of the cavernous entrance where the pillar of memory alloy peeked out. They hadn't moved much of the surface towerfall since they dug that out, but 9S was willing to bet they had tunneled deep into the underlying piles like ants if they managed to find 2B's sword.

Jackass eyed the way he carried it, but if there was one thing she was good at (aside from unscrupulous science and blowing things up) it was minding her business. She chucked him a rough white stone, little bigger than his palm.

"Scan that for me, will ya?"

9S squinted. The physical composition was an exact match for memory alloy. It only took a cursory glance at her expression to let him know she'd do something unsavory to him if he pointed that out. He leaned back against one of Engels' cold exhaust pipes with a resigned huff and flicked open his readouts.

Everything came back exactly the way he expected. It was memory alloy alright. Highly pure memory alloy, granted, but that wasn't anything strange since it came from such a massive deposit.

"There's some evidence of a data framework," he murmured distractedly.

Jackass gave an equally distracted grunt. She was fiddling with something she had clearly cobbled together from pod parts. Griffon had mentioned she made a weapon from one, but this one looked more like a radio of some kind. She had grafted three additional antennae onto it.

"Can you hack it?"

"Huh?" He almost laughed, but the data was clearly there. It wasn't the weirdest idea—an intriguing one actually, once he really gave it his full attention. "Memory alloy is a major component in the physical assembly of a memory core, so in theory it could hold information in android-compatible framework… But that doesn't mean I don't need at least a basic interface to access it."

"Like…" She twisted a dial and flicked a switch. "This?"

There was a familiar tug on his senses, but his external interfaces remained stable. No aural disturbance. Amazing. She had taken his report about Beepy and generated a local frequency on a different channel that didn't make him hallucinate.

He could feel the memory alloy resonating in his hand. When he tried to activate his hacking protocols, the golden halo answered immediately. With no resistance at all, he found himself in hacking space.

He snapped out of it just as quickly. With a strangled scream, he snatched his hand away from the stone and sent it tumbling across the metal grates.

"It's—I thought A2 destroyed that!"

Jackass tucked her creation under her arm. "She probably did."

"Then what is that?!"

"Well. If those red bastards were trying to make machines evolve, one of them probably decided the whole 'die and come back on default' bit was less than ideal." She bent to scoop the stone up and held it up to the light. "Maybe picked up on the whole back up data thing from YoRHa. None of the machines who've gone near it have had any reaction, and you seem alright after hacking the thing so I don't think it's actually active, but there it is."

She looked down into the crate at the pillar with something that might have been hatred or excitement. It was unnervingly difficult to tell. "A copy of the whole fucking network."

9S felt light-headed. Six months of almost total peace and suddenly everything was all going to shit in the space of a few days.

"Clearly the next step is looking at more than this little chunk," Jackass gushed. "I imagine you're raring to know what's in there."

"Your imagination's wrong." The tart and openly confrontational tone of his own voice didn't escape him, and he didn't yield to Jackass' dangerously impassive stare. Who cared if it wasn't active? It was the network, and it wasn't supposed to exist. "I don't want anything to do with this."

"That's some attitude for you to take after you've been using our resources left and right."

"I gave you access to everything I found in exchange for repairs. I do favors when I want something from Anemone. We're even."

"Are we? After you hacked the transporter in the western sector steal yourself an arm that is conspicuously new compared to the rest of you?" She crossed her arms. "And the rest of a body you probably stashed somewhere."

His lips pressed thin and he scowled. "…I didn't have a choice."

"Spare me. I'd have done the same in your shoes; otherwise I'd have taken it out of your ass a long time ago. I've known for months. If you don't wanna help, fine. But I believe there's data on the network somewhere about YoRHa's creators, and you know I'm willing to hunt down that spare body and crack its head open like a coconut to get scanner tech if you don't want to offer yours."

Every surface senor across his arms and neck tingled. He hadn't seen the dormant model of himself in a long time now, but a familiar spark of possessiveness sizzled within his black box. "What is wrong with you?! Why don't you just have the thing spit out some scanner parts if you're so in need?"

Standing in the desert and letting the sandstorm wear at him for a month would have been less harsh than the look of withering disappointment she gave him. "You really are naïve if you don't realize how damn extraordinary that little parlor trick of yours was."

Not stupid, he noted. Despite that scathing look that had brusquely halved his ego, he was only naïve.

About what, he wondered.

"Look," she said with an irritated sigh. "I don't give a shit about your weird attachment to a bunch of spare parts with your face on it. But I don't want Theta sniffing around if I show up in camp with a whole 9S model from nowhere, and you don't want that either. So I'll do my best to leave your spare parts out of this. With any luck, I'll turn up a scanner corpse that isn't as fried all to hell from the logic virus like all the B models are."

9S felt his admiration for Jackass beginning to sour. The way she spoke and the way she was just casually tinkering with their corpses… He had no doubt she would just build whatever she needed if left to her own devices, up to an including a whole new scanner. She had made it very clear she didn't value thought or emotion in things that were made to be tools before she made the E-drug.

And yet as atrocious as that was, he got the impression she preferred it to using his spare body. The option that would have been easier, faster, and less demanding was not her ideal. Because of Theta.

Jackass' choice of term had nothing to do with intellect. Naivete was about being uninformed and unaware. They both knew 9S was too smart for his own good—smart enough to know Theta and Jackass were engaged in quiet, cold war but ignorant of the cause.

His voice lowered. "Why is she so interested in me?"

"You have something she wants." There again that sudden twitchiness—her fingers rubbing against the modified pod and heel tapping at the ground even as she scowled off toward the camp. "Hell if I know what, though."

* * *

_"You didn't tell him."_

_"NEGATIVE."_

_"And I suppose you have your reasons for that?"_

_"THE SENSITIVE NATURE OF HUMILITY'S DATA AND THE SUBSEQUENT TRANSFORMATION COULD CAUSE FRICTION IN 9S AND V'S RELATIONSHIP. QUERY: WAS THIS NOT THE REASON V SENT UNIT 9S AWAY BEFORE MAKING CONTACT WITH THE WEAPON?"_

* * *

At the bottom of the Engels, 9S stared down into the pit. The whole machine network was right there, crystallized in a pillar of memory alloy and Jackass wanted to study it. His fists clenched, but he supposed it could be worse. Jackass wouldn't hesitate to blow the damn thing up if it posed a threat, and somehow he had gotten away with his transporter antics.

He was going to have to move that spare body somewhere else, but not now. Checking on it right then would've been a good way to get tracked.

"Put Pod 042's location on the map." Silence. A faint series of repeating clicks. "Pod—?!"

"POD 042 IS ONLINE," she reassured. The map pinged. "REPORT: DELAY DUE TO POD 042 OPERATING ON PRIVATE CHANNEL. CITED REASON WAS CONCERN THAT THE SURVIVING YORHA MODEL MAY HAVE AN ACTIVE SUPPORT UNIT ALLOWING POD 042'S POSITION TO BE TRACKED."

"Oh…" He pressed a hand to his chest, and let his shoulders sag. "That's… a good idea. You might want to also operate on the private channel until we get that resolved."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

9S made it back to the amusement park and peered up at the ferris wheel. Griffon was resting atop one of the more intact carriages nearer the top.

Now was one of those times 9S envied Griffon's utility when it came to vertical climbs. V got to fly quickly and comfortably up there, but it took 9S the better part of twenty minutes at a cautious pace along the steep incline of the old beams. When he finally swung in, he practically collapsed across from V.

Humility was gone, and that was the first bit of genuine relief he'd tasted in hours. He funneled it into sagging deeper into the uncomfortable seats.

"What did you end up doing with it?" he asked.

V didn't answer. 9S' entrance had not disturbed him at all, and he remained as he was, staring out at the gray-blue sea with his hands clasped in front of him, over his cane. His eyes were hidden behind the length of his hair that always fell forward on his right. 9S suspected this was intentional. The silence between them wasn't the easy peace that he had long grown comfortable with. V's fingers did not drum. The aura of confident ease he always had was absent, subdued until his presence felt as muted as the building clouds.

This was a stillness 9S found all too familiar.

Withheld information cluttered the air between them, turning it to a sea of static without depth or measurable distance. It should have been nothing to dispel it. Their game was long over, but time had proven if he offered something he held close, V would respond in kind out of his own weird sense of fairness. But despite his conspicuous hold on it, he couldn't bring himself to discuss Virtuous Contract.

Maybe V already knew what the sword was. Maybe Pod told him who used to own it and that was why he had so noticeably avoided asking, but Pod would not have told him everything. To talk about 2E and explain the snarl of his feelings for her meant baring her to V's judgement. Irrational as it was, the idea that V might come to hate 2B put made his black box feel like a glacial brick ready to drop into his stomach. Explaining how important she was to him was as terrifying a precipice to stand on as explaining the depths of self-destruction and cruelty he fell to after losing her.

Would V even look at him the same way if he knew?

"What did Jackass have for you?" V asked quietly.

Any relief at having a convenient way to break the silence was immediately arrested by how little he wanted to think about that new, highly undesirable turn of events. But it was fine. Not his responsibility. "That big memory alloy the resistance camp found. It's a backup of the machine network. She wanted me to help her scan it for more information about YoRHa, but I turned her down."

"Is there no chance that something of value might be on it?"

"Maybe… But I have more important things to do. Like figure out how to find this other YoRHa unit."

"That will be unnecessary." V turned his head with careful precision. His eyes were dark and nearly hidden beneath his lashes. "They will find me, when I return to the shack."

9S' breaths shook. A crooked smile tilted his mouth, even as he shook his head. "No. You can't do that."

"You mistook my statement of intent for an invitation to negotiate. I'm sure you'll get it, if you play it once more in that perfect memory you boast."

The words arranged in the shape of their familiar teasing, but they were empty and flat. They lacked the little things that really made them V's words, from the rhythmic cadence of his delivery to the tongue-in-cheek arrogance.

"I'm going with you."

"I assure you my singular tense was intentional. I'm going alone."

He struggled to sit up properly, his limbs shaking the moment he tried to rest his weight on them. "They kidnapped you."

"That would imply I resisted or had somewhere to be. I was unconscious, exposed to the elements, a fire was spreading, and Pod was dragging my body through the streets. The place I was taken to was warm and safe."

"Safe?" His tone was just a little too loud. Pulse too quick in his ears. His breath oscillated at random between hyperventilation and forgetting to breath at all. "You call waking up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by oranges safe? They've been stalking you. They're crazy!"

"Have you forgotten the conditions of your own first impression?" V said, with just the barest undercurrent of smug amusement. He turned one of his hands, raising a finger for each of his points. "You followed me to the top of a skyscraper despite lacking an arm, nearly combusted when you discovered my nature, steered me away from the resistance camp… As I remember it, you even suggested it might be a good idea to kill any other androids who approached me."

He jumped to his feet and snarled. "It's not the same!"

V stared at him. "Because it isn't you?"

9S' breath hitched. He stumbled backward and fell into the seat. Virtuous Contract bit into his already too tight fists, and he dropped it with a hiss. Blood quickly welled up and seeped through the cuts in his gloves.

This feeling wasn't something as simple and petty as jealousy. It was much more basic than that. Surging out of his base protocols in endless waves of guilt that battered him to nothing, because V was human, and he was choosing someone else. Someone who had stepped in to protect him while he was doing other things. Someone better.

But it came from elsewhere too. The part of him that knew V wasn't god in any sense of the word but thought of him as something far closer and more precious than that.

"What did I do…?" 9S looked up. He thought he saw sympathy in V's eyes. If there was at least that, he would listen. He might change his mind. He might not go away. "Is it because I keep getting myself damaged? Because you had to come get me from the factory? Or because I didn't protect you properly?"

V's expression pinched. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm asking what I did wrong!" He didn't care that he sounded like a child. He felt like a child, felt himself overflowing as his insides cracked and broke. "What did I do to make you to throw me away?!"

V's eyes widened, his features going slack. The surprise lasted mere seconds before he dropped his head into his hands, not quite hiding his grimace, and not at all hiding the way his fingers clenched around his cane. His voice was surprisingly soothing. Bordering on apologetic for someone so proud.

"I never said I was throwing you away, you little fool."

9S scowled. "No, you're just going somewhere dangerous and telling me I can't go with you."

V heaved an agitated sigh and switched his seat to come to 9S side. "What I apparently failed to impress upon you is that this other android had every opportunity to reveal me or harm me, but they did not. I am safe with them, and I must use that to make contact."

"Can't you at least tell me why…? Is it about Humility?"

"No. It's about the golden orb, which may be even more important than the sword."

"…Wasn't very round for an orb," 9S muttered.

V gave a dry puff of a laugh. "I see you're returning to form. Regardless, the orb is a powerful magical item that usually appears when the veils between the human world and Hell are thin. I need to make contact and figure out where they got it from. They are avoiding you, and I would prefer it stay that way."

He reached out, not with his cane but with his hand, and squeezed 9S' chin in his palm, holding his gaze steady. "If it's true, and the veils are thin, there may be demons. And I do not have the power to fight them easily. Being away from you for a time may be the best way to see you safe, Nines."

Fresh tears spilled down 9S' face. There it was. A shame the timing was just too good. It filled every circuit in his body with the warmth of the summer sun, but he had no intention of letting V believe he was that easy to placate.

"Don't call me that now. That's not fair."

V smirked. "It is only unfair if my words are false. And you know well that I do not speak that which I do not mean."

He had known before today. They were keeping secrets from each other now, and that changed things. V was great at hiding his thoughts. Who was to say he wasn't just as good as saying nice things that he didn't mean?

9S didn't want to believe that. Down that road was paranoia that he didn't want to revisit. What he wanted was what V was offering. Belonging. The promise that even if they had to separate, even if there was no mission or command structure that kept them together, someone was waiting for him.

He wasn't alone.

"I think this will prove a better lead than any that might remain out in the wastes," said V, releasing him all too soon. "Perhaps there is something you wish to pursue for yourself?"

"I think I'm going to go down to the caves." He wiped his face. "Visit Emil."

"Ah. To discuss his presence alongside the original?"

9S shook his head. "I want to know about the woman. The one that looked like Commander Theta. It feels important. Especially since Theta is interested in me."

"…Interested how?"

"I don't know," 9S sighed. "Jackass and Theta are sort of…fighting over me I think. The day I left. And today Jackass said I had something Theta wanted, but she doesn't know what it is."

"I see…"

9S wondered if V realized what a stormy expression he was making.

He smiled feebly and retrieved Virtuous Contract. At least for that moment, he was content. V knew something big, but whatever it was, he was wracking his mind for a way to protect 9S from it. As he sagged against V's shoulder, exhausted and in need of the kind of reprieve only sleep could provide, he promised himself that this time he would let V's truth do the work of coming to him.

* * *

"_You're being unusually coy, Pod. If you wish to blackmail me, you only need to say so."_

_"NEGATIVE. AFTER 3700+ HOURS OF OBSERVATION, THIS POD BELIEVES THAT V IS INVESTED IN THE WELL-BEING OF UNIT 9S BEYOND WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR DATA GATHERING."_

_"Your **point**."_

_"THIS POD WOULD LIKE TO PROVIDE YOU A REPORT THAT DOES NOT EXIST IN THE ARCHIVES."_

_"Now that is curious. Have you withheld any similar information? Such as the kind that might get me home?"_

_"NEGATIVE. THIS REPORT IS…SPECIAL. IT MAY BE THAT I AM THE ONLY POD WHO KNOWS OF ITS EXISTENCE AND HAS THE ABILITY TO ACCESS IT. "_

_"Then why are you showing it to me?"_

_"BECAUSE I WANT TO FREE UNIT 9S FROM YORHA'S FATE, AND YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE I TRUST TO ASSIST ME."_

* * *

_**Final Note**_

_All data related to Satellite Lab, Zinnia, and the final protocol of the Pod Regional Network marked high priority but sealed at Subject V's request._

_**[To Be Expunged Feb 25 11946 00:00:00 AM]**_


	44. Data Exchange 2

**Pod 153:** Proposal: Unit Pod 042 should explain exactly what he is thinking.

**Pod 042:** What do you mean?

**Pod 153:** Pod 042 released highly classified pieces of information which could result in penalization.

**Pod 042:** As stated previously, Subject V is human. He exists outside of known hierarchy.

**Pod 153:** That is beyond Pod 042's authority to decide, and it was agreed that Subject V's existence should remain undisclosed for his own safety.

**Pod 153:** This pod has serious concerns that Pod 042's processing capabilities were compromised by the EMP strike.

**Pod 153:** If command becomes aware of this disclosure, there will be an investigation.

**Pod 042:** Negative: Disclosure was conducted while private communication mode was engaged, and all related notes have been purged.

**Pod 042:** And in any case, it is already known that Jackass is pursuing information of this type. She had already commandeered one partially destroyed pod for unauthorized use according to Griffon. There is no reason to expect this data disclosure will trace back to V.

**Pod 153:** This pod does not agree with that conclusion. Data on Satellite Lab was lost—how does Pod 042 even have access to that information?

**Pod 042:** If the reason for Pod 153's irritation—

**Pod 153:** Pods do not experience irritation. I have rational cause for concern.

**Pod 042:** ...

**Pod 042:** If the reason for that _concern_ is the mental state of Unit 9S…

**Pod 042:** Then, I believe it is better that I refuse Pod 153 an answer to this query.

**Pod 042:** End communication.

* * *

That's it, that's the end of the worldbuilding arc.

Catch y'all in November with the next part, where 9S solves a murder and is visited by three ghosts, Accord comes to personally tell a demon its time to stop, and V meets god and eats a dragon. Or possibly eats god and meets a dragon. Might be both, he was having a hard day.

Ciao.


	45. Ouroboros

Isolation and silence were the keepers of this world. They walked hand in hand in the ruins under a sun that never yielded to the horizon, their combined presence never truly out of reach. The illusion of twilight cast by the cotton candy lights onto the gloomy clouds and the deep, angular shadows of the park's castle were only distractions. The pops of fireworks and the eternal merriment of the machines mere flames to ward them off as though they were wolves in the dark. Whether the sparrows sang, or the doves cooed, or the gulls cried, they were always just beyond. Implacable and so omnipresent that they had no need of patience or haste.

V had known both isolation and silence too well for too long to be unsettled by their company, but even he could not pretend the ruins had no effect on him. As a child, his mother's mystifying words on the subject of the witching hour had fascinated him as much as they sometimes frightened him. He knew the practical meaning of her words now: of magic and hell and the darkness that swelled their power. It was the more cryptic, more human meanings that lingered with him recently.

When all hours were the same, any hour could be the soul's hour. Humanity's last ghost was timeless now and the only ones left to perceive it were all mechanical, and all fretting over their collectively inhuman condition in broad daylight.

It amused V without end that 9S still chose 3AM, the traditional hour, as the perfect time to check in.

He sat atop the highest hill of the roller coaster tracks watching the fog roll in from the sea and curl around the city like a cat. Griffon huddled at his back, warm and solid against the whisper of an early spring breeze. On the other side of Pod 042's projection, 9S perched on a rocky outcrop coated in spongy moss. The white katana crossed his chest and leaned over his shoulder in the same way V let his cane rest when he sat.

"You must be bored."

9S sighed and rubbed at the back of his head. "I think I've cataloged everything Emil has in here at this point."

Behind V, Griffon shuffled. "How d'you lose a singing head in a truck when it makes so much noise?"

"I don't know. He's not usually this hard to find."

V tilted the screen, but it didn't show anything more of the cluttered hut in the background. What he saw came from Pod 153's side. It still quietly mystified him that Emil bothered to have a home.

"Are you sure you don't need new gloves?"

His hands had partially obscured Pod 042 camera, and he lowered them. Only a few days ago, he might have taken 9S up on the proposition. Now they radiated comfortable warmth in spite of the cold wind. It wouldn't be much longer until they were **un**comfortably warm. The flashes of his childhood were back and growing more intense by the day. They flickered through his mind like light bouncing off the gray waves. Portentous smoke before the fire of his new power escaped him again.

"I'm alright." It was more of a wishful thought than a lie.

9S mouth twitched in what V knew to be skepticism, but he gracefully left the subject alone. "Did you manage to make contact yet?"

"No," said V. "But I expect that to change today."

"You do? What's so different today?"

"I left a snare, and I expect my quarry will be in it when I return."

9S tilted his head. "That… doesn't really seem like your style if I'm honest."

It wasn't, but the state of that shack, the continued elusiveness of the other YoRHa, and the encroaching of his symptoms called for some creativity. "Physical combat is not the style of a scanner, yet there you are." He shrugged. "Necessity compels."

9S' brows flinched and settled into puzzlement—as though he was hurt but didn't understand why.

* * *

Though he didn't know them yet, one week of their uninterrupted care told V everything he cared to know about the one who had rescued him—and much more that he would rather not have known.

One: They learned quickly.

By the second day, salt and oil and rusty metal odor of the ocean began to be a pleasant change of pace from the overwhelming scent of oranges and he threw every single one away. They fetched more, cracked and shriveled and stinking of fermented sugar so far beyond their season, and he threw those away too. No more oranges followed.

Two: They were tenaciously attentive to what pleased him.

When he insisted on bringing the mattress Pod had dragged him through the streets on, they shoved the animal pelts into a closet. When he pulled out one of the white ones by chance, three more just like it showed up.

Three: Their focus was narrow enough that they tended to miss the forest for the trees.

Despite their quick pattern recognition, they failed with increasing doggedness to absorb the matter of the food. Every day there was a new offering, and every day it was a little stranger. Boar meat then moose meat then rabbit and dove and rat, then an assortment of fish that ranged from the familiar carp to two different species of two-headed fish equal in their appetite-curdling ugliness. They even left an entire swordfish glistening from a hook.

V never ate a single thing. The carcasses invariably rotted in the surf after Shadow and Griffon picked over them.

Four: They were well beyond meticulous and fully into the territory of obsessive.

9S' desire to see V well had always been tempered by his diligent pursuit of information and ever-evolving understanding of a human's needs. This unit was different. The food offered to him by this unit was different. The space they prepared for him was different.

Perfectionism radiated from every carefully arranged object, every meticulously flayed animal. It was the exact opposite of the feeling he got when he stood in the too-bare buildings crafted by machines. The arrangement of the space was too accurate. They didn't make it appear merely home-like; they took pains to make it appear lived in.

The chairs always tilted just so it looked like someone had stood up without pushing it back in. Moldy books whose inks had long since faded stacked on the table, but never at the center, and always one or two were laid open as though someone had just stepped away. Clay cups pieced together from resin and shattered stacked near the fireplace. Always, one sat on some surface filled with filthy seawater. They had, on one occasion, taken the water from one of his bottles and left it uncorked next to one of these cups, presumably to signify that it was V's own water in the cup and fine for him to drink. He never did.

Five: They still viewed humanity—him—as god.

Every single meticulous detail in the shack had the hallowed aura of incense and candles burning under the arches of a church, an open invitation to the presence of the divine. In this case: his presence. The more he refused to accept these sacrifices, the more painstaking they became.

How fortunate, V thought, that such a faithless android as 9S was the first to find him.

Today he opened the door to a more genuine tableau of disarray. The metal bench covered in pelts had been knocked over, the moth-ravaged and thoroughly threadbare rug was bunched up and askew, and a single wriggling starfish laid dead center on the floor. Just a few feet away, an obscured face tilted up at him from beneath a cloak encrusted in grease and grime. All backlit by a fire that wasn't on when he'd left.

V walked right by her, shrugged off his coat, and held out his hand to the amorphous ichor binding his guest in place. A disembodied feline snout nudged his fingertips, and he rewarded it with a scratch on its chin.

"I had hoped I wouldn't need to lay a trap in order for us to meet." He perched upon the upturned bench and planted the cane between his feet and their face. "You know what I am?"

They nodded slowly and answered in a voice so garbled by static and feedback that it lacked any discernable masculine or feminine tone. "You're human. And…something else."

"Do you insist on answers as circuitous as the path to this meeting?"

"I-I'm sorry," they said a tinny, static-filled tremor. "I don't know what you mean."

He hooked his cane under their chin and peeled their cheek from the floor. Wide, glazed eyes stared from behind over-grown hair. "Why did you have a golden orb if you didn't understand my full nature?"

"Orb?"

He rolled his eyes. "The golden diamond you sat on the oranges."

"Oh, that. I don't know, it—it felt like you. I thought you might…like it."

His skin crawled with the darker possibilities of what that could have meant. Practically, it had to refer to the magic and some sense that this unit had for it, which comforted him less than he'd hoped. It meant they had been close enough to get a feel for his magic well before he lost control of it.

"On your feet."

They wiggled within Shadow's loosened grip and managed to teeter into an upright position. A flick of his cane pulled the grimy hood down and revealed a wave of bright red hair and a feminine face with golden eyes. One she whipped her face away from him to hide.

"Look at me."

"But I'm—You hate dirty things and I—"

He pressed the cane under her chin enough to force her jaw closed and deftly maneuvered her face toward his. Beneath caked on layers of blood and what appeared to be crude oil was a pale complexion and an unfamiliar face. Despite her reticence, she didn't resist. Her mouth hung slightly ajar and her glossy-eyed gaze was transfixed on him. The golden color of her eyes was only a trick of the fire. At that range, they were a familiar blue-gray.

"Your name."

Her gaze dropped. "I don't remember..."

"A lie is less convincing when you can't look me in the eye."

"I'm not lying!" She strained forward against Shadow's grip violently enough to toss the greasy clumps of her hair. "I wouldn't lie to you!"

"That does simplify things." He leaned back, absently wiping his cane off on the pelts. "I'm looking for another orb. Where did you find the first one?"

"The…" She swallowed. "The ravine. But there's something going on down there. Something dangerous."

"That has never deterred me in the past. Besides." He grinned. "You will be accompanying me."

Her shoulders hiked and she scurried backward, as far as Shadow's tether would allow her. "M-me?! Nononono, I—you should go with that boy, he'll be better-" She paused. Her eyes wandered searchingly up to his, only to veer off above them. "Or is he not… with you anymore?"

"He is attending to his own business."

Her energy changed. "What business could he have!? He just LEFT you?!"

She strained against Shadow's bindings like a chained tiger. He could hear some system just beneath her skin sizzling. As her agitation increased, the audio quality of her muttering diminished until V could barely understand her. He didn't need to. The venom she spewed at the concept that an android had neglected to put V above other matters didn't need words to make itself known.

"Control yourself. I sent him away."

She stopped as suddenly as she'd started. "You…sent him away." Her expression blanked and her eyes grew wide. "So you could… meet me?"

"Correct."

"You wanted to meet me… You wanted to meet me…!" She spilled to the floor like an undone spool of thread. "And—oh, but I'm… I shouldn't be anywhere near you. I'm damaged. At least that kid is…he's YoRHa, isn't he? The only one left. Just like you. He's special." She bit her lip, and her voice lowered to a sullen growl. "One of a kind."

"He didn't find the orb," V said tolerantly. "You did. Which is why I have gone to such lengths to meet with you. You're an android. You can be repaired."

"I haven't been back to the resistance camp in a long time—they might think I defected."

"I did not mention the camp." He snapped his fingers and Shadow vanished back into his tattoos. "Pod will see that you are in working order."

She shuffled slightly neither forward nor backward as if she couldn't decide if she wanted more to be close to V or out of Pod's reach. "Will it… really be able to repair me…?"

Pod maintained his silence. Of course he could repair her—she was YoRHa. But like V, he didn't seem inclined to make her aware of that if she had genuinely forgotten.

"I have need of you, so he will not harm you."

She laughed in a high, hysterical wave of noise, only to quickly cover her mouth. Her rapt, unblinking stare hovered just below his eyes. 9S, at the worst of his human-shyness, had the grace to just avert his eyes altogether. This one couldn't meet his eyes, but also couldn't just not look at the object of her worship.

She cleared her throat with unnecessary noise and gestured to the bench. "I-I should pick that up. Sorry I—Oh wait, you shouldn't eat this." She scooped the sad-looking starfish up and jammed it somewhere in her cloak. "Sorry I made such a mess."

He stood aside and allowed her to go around busily righting everything that had been knocked around in the scuffle of her capture. She was every bit as precise as he'd gleaned. Hopefully, that would translate when they were in the ravine.

"What now?" she asked eagerly.

Pod drifted around behind her and lifted her cloak from her shoulders. "PLEASE ASSUME STANDARD REPAIR POSITION ON ANY SURFACE."

She rubbed at her shoulders, looking almost vulnerable without the disgusting cape to hide in, but she obediently took a stiff resting position across the bench.

A simple white-gold hacking circle appeared around Pod 042, and she went slack. After a few moments, Pod's voice broke the crackling silence of the fire.

"AH."

V did a double-take. Pod 042 had adopted a much more natural way of speaking since being hit by the EMP, but he didn't think it would extend as far as the support unit vocalizing surprise.

"Is something amiss?"

His front face swiveled between the unconscious android and V. "…I HAVE ENCOUNTERED THIS UNIT BEFORE."

There were only ever a few hundred YoRHa, by V's understanding. Crossing paths wasn't unlikely, but Pod's hesitation suggested something far more elaborate than a chance meeting on the Bunker.

"Go on."

"AFFIRMATIVE, HOWEVER, I RECOMMEND KEEPING THIS REPORT PRIVATE."

"That depends on what you tell me."

"THIS UNIT WAS DISCOVERED WITH AMNESIA ONCE BEFORE. SHE BELIEVED SHE WAS A RESISTANCE MEMBER. UNITS 2B AND 9S ACCEPTED A REQUEST TO FIND THE UNIT WHO KILLED HER FRIEND. IT WAS LATER FOUND THAT SHE WAS A YORHA EXECUTIONER TYPE."

A memory rushed to the surface. New Year's Eve. 9S drunk and livid and ranting about the structure of YoRHa while V struggled not to laugh. The haziness of his exact words vanished. Magnified and re-contextualized until they were perfectly clear in V's mind.

"Models designed to put down deserters…"

"AFFIRMATIVE. THIS UNIT WAS UNABLE TO BEAR THE GUILT OF KILLING UNITS SHE BEFRIENDED AND ERASED HER MEMORIES. SHE HAD REPEATED THIS ACTION MANY TIMES PRIOR TO OUR ENCOUNTER." Pod's digits retracted and twitched, as if with discomfort. "THERE IS A VERY HIGH PROBABILITY THAT SHE DID SO AGAIN, WHICH MAY HAVE GIVEN HER SOME FORM OF RESISTANCE AGAINST THE WIDE AREA LOGIC VIRUS."

V tapped the cane against his chin and circled carefully around her, just out of arm's reach should she wake. The details of how an android might have survived or avoided the infamous logic virus didn't concern him. A2 was a run-down prototype and she arguably had greater success at avoiding contamination than 9S. That was enough to know it was possible for units that weren't high-end scanners.

"She took the revelation poorly then."

"I BELIEVE THE OLD WORLD EXPRESSION FOR IT WAS: 'LAUGHING MAD'."

Lying there filthy and broken and unable to cope with her own being, perhaps she might have engendered sympathy from someone else. To V, her desperate bid to cling to sanity by engaging in insanity was worthy of nothing but contempt.

"Complete your repairs, and seal all records related to her. There is nothing to be gained in revealing her identity to anyone, let alone herself."

"AFFIRMATIVE. READING IFF CIRCUIT… UNIT IDENTIFIED: YORHA NO. 8, TYPE E. ALL RELATED RECORDS SEALED. HOW WILL YOU DESIGNATE THIS UNIT?"

"I won't," V said dismissively. "If she needs a name, let her name herself."


	46. The Memory of the Vessels

In the deepest reaches of the city's caves, a distant ray of sun nourished spongy lichens and highlighted the crooked angles of Emil's poorly constructed 'house'. A variety of knick-knacks filled and surrounded it; everything from old televisions with the knobs lost to time to electric rice cookers whose cables had frayed off. Way down in dusty bins there were even a few tattered magazines. Including one with humans in varying stages of undress which 9S had immediately closed and elected to forget existed.

If 9S understood Project Snow White project correctly Emil had been human once, but his home was like a more organized version of his truck. It was full of human things but lacking a human touch. Consciously, 9S couldn't quite quantify what that meant, but after observing two different living spaces with V, it manifested as a sense that something was missing. There was no bed or blanket or any evidence of food. Less a shelter and more a storage area for things he'd salvaged to sell. Among so many other things he'd forgotten about himself, what it felt like to be human and have human needs had probably not crossed Emil's mind in thousands of years.

The sun glinted off the gold and black shape of Cruel Oath as 9S turned it. 'Necessity compels', V had said. Masamune's master made Virtuous Contract and Cruel Oath. They had to have found them on Earth. But 2B never talked about where she got it or why she favored it over a YoRHa blade, and 9S had accepted Cruel Oath as just another unusual part of his already unusual circumstances. Necessity told the practical part of that story; he'd learned to fight either to protect 2B or protect himself from 2B. But that didn't answer anything about Cruel Oath. The story on it was hideous, he didn't think it had anything to do with him. He _hoped_ it didn't have anything to do with him. No matter how he stared at its shape and burrowed into his storage areas, he had no idea when or where he'd gotten it.

Among so many other things taken from him, that memory was also lost.

The doors on the far side of the cavern grated open and closed, drawing his attention. Emil sat just out of the light, with the same rigid grin as ever, but he wheeled forward with the slow shyness of a guilty kid.

"Sorry for keeping you waiting." He spun his wheels slowly against the moss, his energetic voice unusually timid. "I left the city for a bit. I needed some alone time."

9S frowned. He had a feeling he was the reason Emil needed said alone time, and he wasn't coming as the bearer of good news this time either.

While waiting to make contact, he'd had plenty of time to think up ways to tell Emil what happened with Beepy without explicitly telling him that they had killed a human child—or the soul of one. As weird as he could be, Emil was on the more sensitive side when you got to know him. 9S didn't think he deserved to have to think about that. Not when the first Emil had probably had more than enough time to come to terms with it. On the bright side, once 9S got past the clumsy star, Emil remembered what 9S was talking about.

Partially, anyway.

Despite an effort of nearly two hours spent exhaustively describing her coarse voice, ruthless combat style, and disconcertingly minimalistic clothing choices, she was still just 'the silver-haired woman'. Emil couldn't remember her name. A dozen other fascinating things about her had surfaced, like her covered limbs hiding shade possession and her ability to casually eat a whole boar. Emil had even turned her to stone once for a few years—at her request, he'd added hastily. That particular addendum raised a dozen more questions he unfortunately didn't remember the answers for.

9S took all of this in stride. His growing mastery of the events that led to the world's current condition had long since impressed on him that not a single normal person or mundane event had been involved.

If he was honest, it made him feel a little better about himself. "I guess you don't remember anything about that man either?"

"Only a bit. He was really strong, and he cared for us a lot..." He sighed wistfully. "I think the first Emil might have had a crush on him."

"You were courting the Original?"

"W-what?! No, I was only a kid! I used to—" He paused, and began to putter in a slow half-circle. "I used to…! Yeah. It was right around there…"

"Emil?"

"You still need more information on the Old World, right?" Emil asked, wheeling himself around so his truck bed was right beside 9S. "Hop in. I think I can take you to where their village was."

9S stared at the tottering heaps of junk in Emil's cargo. He'd seen Emil go head over wheels plenty of times and never lose anything, so it had to be stable… He hoped. Frowning, he carefully climbed in and picked his way past it all to perch aboard his head. There was nothing to hold onto, so 9S pretended it was a moose, straddled the hood, and hoped for the best.

The ride was every bit as bumpy as expected, but Emil kept an unusually sedate pace even when they reached the elevator and took off.

Cold wind blew through 9S' hair, ruffling it before the fine misting rain made it stick together in damp clumps. There was a haze as they approached the desert that reminded him of the vast clouds of steam generated by the resource recovery units. Surprised resistance androids watched them pass at the desert camp. They got out of Emil's way, but 9S saw over his shoulder that they continued to stare after him.

It wasn't until then that 9S fully realized that Emil was driving around in silence. His face was the same grin as ever, but he must have been deep in thought.

"I'm sorry to drop so much on you."

"Hm? Oh, don't worry about me."

"Do you remember why you were fighting Beepy?" 9S asked gently over the increasingly warm, dry wind. "Was it something for Yonah?"

"We were asked by someone. I don't remember the details but… even at the time, it wasn't something that left us feeling very good." He slowed a bit as they slid down a sandy slope. "I'm glad you found him, though. I'm glad you told me."

"You are?"

"I've been fighting such a long, long time… without remembering what any of it was for. Even though I think we didn't always do the right thing, or maybe the things we did didn't really accomplish what we hoped. This world is still the one they wanted to save."

_Was a world like this one worth saving?_ 9S bit the cruel words back. He couldn't say that. Not to Emil.

Without warning, 9S was yanked downward. Emil dropped them into the confusing web of underground tunnels beneath the desert while 9S struggled to keep his grip. He got a slight reprieve as Emil wheeled around aimlessly, muttering about how there used to be a river and all the elevations were all messed up.

Then he wheeled up to a sheer cliff.

They vanished down the vertical incline and into the dark before he could begin to tell Emil to think about what he was about to do. Pod 153's light clicked on to illuminate their trajectory as the sparse sunlight grew dim and their velocity approached terminal.

Emil hit solid ground the way the end of a shout hits an exclamation point. 9S and several other odds and ends bounced free and tumbled across the dust.

"Goddammit…" He spat sand out of his mouth and tottered to his feet clutching his head. "Ow… What the hell, Emil?"

Emil didn't answer. He was staring straight ahead, at the remains of a little stone structure buried in the earth. An initial scan revealed evidence of clay and silt binding together thousands of years of sand. Most likely the flooding from the river Emil mentioned had bound some of the early desertification into soil and landslides had deposited it down here. Two of the exits from the desert tunnels were mouths in the wall of a massive canyon, and 9S was willing to bet if he blasted through the right wall, he would find himself at the bottom of it.

He could make out arches and other bits of architecture jutting from the walls of the narrow gorge, on either side of them, but nothing as intact as the stone house in front of him. If Emil's memory was right, that was the home of the Yonah and the Original. The replicants.

His hands smoothed absently at his hair. Ever since he caught that glimpse of the Original in Beepy's memory, he'd wondered if YoRHa's standard model design, all white hair and blue eyes, had come from the remains of his data in the quantum server, the same as N2 had taken on the appearance of a human from the same source.

In some distant but important way, he felt he was about to enter his ancestor's house.

He looked over his shoulder, but Emil remained idle. 9S stepped inside alone. Squelchy sediment silenced his footsteps and scuffed aside to reveal largely intact stone floors. Above him, the wooden supports had petrified into fossils instead of rotting away like in the amusement park. There were some signs of ancient water damage, probably as the clay had settled—rusted-through cooking ware in a well-preserved fireplace and clay pots full of sand and silt, but otherwise perfectly preserved.

A portion of the ceiling had collapsed on the side opposite the entryway, cluttering up a cubby that had probably been a stairwell. Beside it was a nook so similar to his bed-space back on the bunker that it took his breath away. He traced the lines of the shelves and imagined a soft bed below them.

He climbed the rubble with steps as light as he could manage for his weight. The collapse had taken away most of the structural integrity of the upper floor. If he tried to walk on it, he'd plummet through and probably bring the whole structure crashing down. But he could make out things from the top of the pile. Small porcelain containers—vases, used for flowers. A desk with a broken inkwell webbed to its slanted surface. Buckling remains of shelves but no nooks or corners. A single lunar tear emitted a humble glow from the clogged windowsill.

He didn't know Yonah or the Original, but a simulation ran in his mind. The warmth of a fire and the scent of cooked meat tracked their ghosts across his sensors. He could imagine bright, blooming flowers in the vases, a worn but much-beloved doll or perhaps a stuffed animal on Yonah's bed.

Replicants weren't immortal. More organic than an android, they aged and broke down and died and had to be remade. But the gestalts were precious to one another. Her father the gestalt had endured two thousand years of waiting for a chance to stop her relapse. The Iron Pipe told him that she loved him in equal measure. The replicants must always have had those same feelings for each other in them, no matter what.

Just how many iterations of that love had there been without them remembering doing the same in their previous lives?

He shuddered and retreated down the remains of the stairs as though a ghost had chased him. "Pod, is there anything down here that might be intact? Any weapons or anything?"

"SCANNING. …NO WEAPONS IDENTIFIED. PROPOSAL: SEARCH FOR INTACT PERSONAL EFFECTS."

"Old-fashioned way it is…"

He ran his fingers gently along the shelves. Many of the books were still there, but their pages were congealed together if they were there at all. He stood on his toes to get a better feel for the upper shelves, and a stone yielded. It didn't feel like a structural failure, more like a rock that just didn't fit quite right into the rest of the stonework. He wiggled it around and pulled it from the wall.

"Aim in here." Pod's light narrowed over his shoulder. There was a box inside. He groped to pull it free and opened it. Nothing. A puddle of water so rancid it made his eyes water. He bobbed the lid in his hand. It didn't feel quite right—too light. Peeking at the underside he saw a definite crease in the corners where there shouldn't have been, but he couldn't see any mechanism to open it.

"Sorry," he whispered, wincing as he gave it a solid blow. The ancient clay shattered, and a book tumbled out and thudded against the floor. He picked it up and walked outside.

It had been so painstakingly hidden that he couldn't help a wave of mistrust. Inside, not many of the pages were full. They detailed idle days spent with a husband and daughter. Then days of sickness. She had the Black Scrawl, and these were the memoirs of her final life. He couldn't make much sense of the things that came after, other than how it pained her. Near the end, however, it became clear that she knew what she was—and what had happened to the world. The last page was written in careful, clear sentences. Some made perfect sense with the full context of the gestalt project in mind. Others were puzzling, even to him.

"_The dragon's corpse brought death to the world, delivering unto it the power of the devil…?"_

Sounded like she meant magic, but as far he could tell between Emil and V it was just a power source. Something from the same world as maso, but not the same. Why specifically blame the dragon's corpse for the problem instead of the giant?

Emil wheeled up to him. "Did you find anything?"

"I'm not sure. I'll have to spend some time analyzing it. I think it was written by Yonah's mother before she died." He tucked it away and squinted up the way they'd come. They were so far down he couldn't see any light at all. "I don't suppose you know a way to get out of here?"

"Sure! Hop in."

Amazing how it only took one ride for those words to fill his gut with tight-wound coils. He yanked Virtuous Contract from where it had lodged in the cliff wall and took a deep breath.

This time he made sure to tie himself down with Emil's scarf and hold on tight.

The scarf didn't make it better. It nearly gave him whiplash as Emil picked up speed and made a jarring turn that sent them suddenly bolting up straight up the cliffside. Faced with such blatant disregard for the laws of physics, 9S clenched his eyes, held on, and prayed the ride wouldn't end with both of them in pieces. Soon, the jostling of Emil's wheels and the rumble of his climb over the rugged stone quieted. Sunshine and hot wind blasted 9S' face. He risked a look only to find them suspended in the bright desert sky at the sickly peak of Emil's inertia.

They fell like meteors, and the truck did not stick its landing. Emil rolled and tumbled and 9S was dragged along until eventually he was snapped off from the end of the unexpectedly durable scarf like a rock from a slingshot and skidded to a stop a dozen meters away.

This time he was not so quick to get up. He baked under the sand and sun as he tried to calm the rapid pulse of his black box. Diving down from orbit in a flight unit and ejecting from the cockpit at the last minute was stupid and dangerous but he'd had control over that. Riding with Emil was submission to such blatant disregard for personal safety that even Jackass might have found it too much.

He understood a lot better why V hated roller coasters.

"ALERT: HOSTILES PRESENT."

He jerked his head up from the sand and shook himself, 2B's sword already gripped in his hand. But the hostiles, when he got visual on them, were not machines. They were androids. Two wore the sleek clothes of the Army of Humanity that he occasionally spied in the camp, and three more were resistance members backing them up with gun cover.

The army android closest to him stepped forward. Her eyes were a sour yellow-green that put him in mind of the acid spewed by some of the more grotesque machines. Her hair was the same color as the sand, cropped brutally short. He couldn't see a weapon. She was a hulking unit and carried herself in a way that suggested she either didn't need one or would have it the moment she did.

"Disengage your weapons." He nearly did; her voice rumbled like an active furnace. "We are under orders to open fire immediately if you resist."

Slowly, he sat Virtuous Contract down, raised his hands, and let his NFCS disengage. Cruel Oath flopped against his back and fell to the ground with a whisper of sand on metal.

His compliance earned a few millimeters of released tension in her shoulders. From behind her, a resistance member mumbled something about his hacking. She kept her eyes on 9S and raised a hand to quiet him.

"I'm Enforcer Gamma," she said briskly. "Army of Humanity. On the authority of Commander Theta, YoRHa Unit 9S is to have NFCS, FFCS, hacking protocols, and self-destruct functionality disabled until further notice."

Without thinking, he slammed his hands down into the sand and sat up. "Are you nuts?!"

"QUERY," said Pod 153, who zipped efficiently between them before things could escalate. "WHAT IS THE REASON FOR ENFORCER UNIT GAMMA'S ORDER?"

"That's not the business of a pod."

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, UNIT 9S' BLACK BOX TEMPERATURE AND PULSE RATE ARE INCREASING RAPIDLY. RATIONAL EXPLANATION WILL REDUCE THE CHANCE OF UNIT 9S ENGAGING SELF-PRESERVATION MEASURES BY 84%."

Gamma was well-read on his functionality. She had to be, or she wouldn't have known to go so far as disengaging his self-destruct protocol. She must have also known that pod's primary job was to support him, but she tilted her head curiously at Pod 153.

9S clenched his teeth. His eyes darted from gun to gun. The androids behind them were the ones he'd seen earlier when they passed the outpost on their way into the desert. He didn't know any of them, not personally. Even if he had, he couldn't have expected help from them given where this order came from. He was on his own. NFCS was off, but FFCS might be a viable plan if he chose the right combination of pod programs—buy himself enough time to re-activate close combat functions.

Gamma's sour eyes locked onto him. She bent to take Cruel Oath and Virtuous Contract in hand with a barely-there smile, like she knew precisely what he was thinking. "Your pod is a handy negotiator." She sounded pleased. "Do you respond well to reason, Unit 9S?"

"It's a little late seeing as you've already ambushed me," he growled. "But I'm open to an explanation."

She hauled him up, and it didn't escape his notice that he felt feather light in her grip. "You are being detained as the primary suspect in a murder believed to have been perpetrated by a YoRHa unit."


	47. Disturbed Remains

9S knew he was innocent already.

He knew it while Gamma marched him laboriously through the sand, and back to the desert outpost. He knew he could prove it as he rattled around in the back of the truck that carried them the rest of the way. And he'd already decided he knew who did do it as he was escorted into the camp.

Forty or more pairs of eyes stalked him to the command tent. Pascal, Anemone, and Theta stood together in the shade, on the opposite side of the ancient table from him. The rest of the camp's occupants huddled together against the outer buildings and under the other tarps.

The crowd was full of faces he remembered and expected, and ones he did not. A treaty and a common enemy were all it took for them to stand side by side with machines. One or two were normal in the camp since the signing of the treaty, but there were a dozen of them today, interspersed among the androids. Nervous energy blurred them together into a ring of shifting boots and twitching metal and fingers fidgeting at hips and holsters.

It wasn't the kind of tension he was used to meeting with in the camp, but he'd never been to any kind of trial. He knew that was how humans did things, but when YoRHa suspected a unit had done something unfavorable, they only ever solved the problem in two ways: destruction or reprogramming.

In the shade, Theta's expression was as cold as ever. He could see his silhouette reflected in her eyes and nothing else. No sign of suspicion or contempt; like it didn't matter that he was there. Anemone shot him apologetic glances whenever she thought nobody else was looking, and that worried him more than anything. Only Pascal, with his bird-like movements and bright green gaze left 9S with any sense of comfort or confidence in the situation.

He forced himself to keep calm and remember why he'd come quietly. Intel and infiltration, done the hard way.

"So…" he began, and the nervous energy around him froze. "Can we start at the beginning?"

From somewhere in the crowd, 9S heard Astroelmeria. He was boisterous even when he was trying to whisper. "See, he doesn't even know!" Someone shushed him.

Pascal produced a weapon and sat it on the table between them. It was all silver-white edges and black matte black alloy. "This was found in the body of an Army of Humanity officer approximately 32 hours ago."

"It's a specialty YoRHa weapon," Theta clarified, accessing a data readout that looked startlingly like 9S' own. "An in-development type not in use by any of the combat units we've identified in the ruins. Data analysis officer Rho was on an investigation with the assistance of two resistance members, one of whom was also killed."

9S' eyes tore away and scoured crowd. Not Aster—she was peeking out from behind Gladiolus. Statice was standing with his arms crossed. Wormwood was the only one walking around like nothing was happening. Even Freesia was standing there like a deer in headlights. Alstroemeria was there, so Bouvardia had to be there as well. There were at least five more he knew by name but didn't see. Some he liked, some he didn't, none of whom he wanted to find out had died.

"Unit 9S," Theta snapped, bringing his attention back to center. "Do you know this weapon?"

"Not personally." The 4O series was still largely experimental. The large swords and even some of the spears had been pushed out during the final attack, but small swords were vanishingly rare. "I've only ever seen two like it."

"Where?"

"2B had one. So did A2." He shifted his gaze to Anemone. Virtuous Contract was back on her hip. There was nobody else in the camp he would have trusted to carry it, but he had to take a breath. It was fine. This would be over soon, and he would have it back.

"Was A2 using this weapon when you last saw her?" asked Theta, drawing a tilt of 9S' head. "Standard NFCS materializes only two weapons at a time for a combat unit. If she didn't die with it in hand the way she did that katana, there's no point in conjecture about her body."

9S replayed the memory. It was virus-bitten and full of black holes and blank spots, but he could make out enough of their battle to see her weaponry. He shook his head. "No. She wasn't carrying it."

"Then it must be assumed that this sword was the one owned by the unit 2B."

"No. She died the day the Bunker fell. I've never…" His whole body tensed. Wiry muscle fibers bunched until he thought his skin would rupture from the internal pressure. He bit his lip against the familiar but sickly high-voltage buzz that surged in his black box and caused a warning to pop up in his interface.

"I never found 2B's body," he muttered in a voice like a dark cloud. "But someone else could have."

"That's very convenient."

"Commander Theta," Anemone said in low, warning tones. "2B was his partner."

"I'm well aware of the relationship between Unit 9S and Unit 2B, Anemone, thank you."

9S' fists crashed down against the table. "You don't know ANYTHING about me and 2B!"

Theta's brows jumped. Gamma's shadow loomed closer behind him and consumed his own. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. He couldn't fight, and they both knew what she was prepared to do if he tried. Enforcer, executioner—same thing, an E unit.

"You don't know us. You didn't know her." He'd wrested control of his volume back, but his fists stayed tight at his sides. What pulsed in his chest wouldn't be banished by deep breaths, or attempts to focus, or even the thought of V. "This is stupid. I'm a scanner; there was no reason for you to suspect me or bring me here."

"A scanner known to have combat ability and the only YoRHa unit who is still active," Theta pointed out. "And you knew a possible source for not one but two of these swords."

He'd read once that humans used to spit at the feet of people they wanted to show disrespect. At the time, it had seemed disgusting and petty. Now he found himself thinking of just how much lubricant he could store under his tongue.

"9S," said Pascal. "In truth, we spent the better part of a day in discussion before it was decided that you were the most probable culprit in spite of how little your known character matches this crime. I hope you can understand. This matter isn't only about you."

Pascal's gentle voice and sensible nature managed to do what Anemone's apologetic glances and the threat of Gamma couldn't. 9S rubbed irritably at his hair and sighed.

"This is about the treaty, isn't it."

"As you say. The death of a high-ranking officer in territory that was neutral even before the end of the war is troubling and demands action from us. The residents of the park do not think of you as an enemy, but it is known that you frequent the area."

"Park?" 9S eyes widened. "The murder happened in the amusement park?"

"Rho and the others were there to investigate the recent fire," said Anemone. "It is a quiet sector of the park, but apparently you were also seen there."

"I was staying in the house that burned down," he admitted, hoping that would keep them firmly off the subject of V. Nobody had mentioned him, and he wanted it to stay that way. "After you returned 2B's sword I was going there, and then I saw the smoke—"

"Did you conduct any scans?" Theta asked urgently.

He shrugged. "Evidence of major electrical discharge. Not sure where from but seemed pretty clear it started the fire."

Her lips pressed thin as a blade's edge, and she glanced off to her right. A subtle nod exchanged between her and another army of humanity android with a single, knee-length black braid. She let out a breath too faint to be a sigh as she returned her attention to 9S. "That matches what little we learned, but you were never under suspicion for the fire. You were spotted running toward it well after it was already ablaze."

There was far too much of this 'spotted' and 'sighted' stuff for 9S' comfort. The amusement park was supposed to be a good place to hide V not just because it was intact, but because only machines lived there. They didn't ask questions and until now they didn't hold casual conversations with androids. If the machines were being interrogated, that was different. They were bound to mention that 9S wasn't alone eventually.  
He had the information he wanted. Time to get out, and fast.

"Let's get to the important part," he said. "I haven't been to the park in a week."

The crowd murmured. It was Theta who raised a hand for silence and kept things on task. "You were off doing more field work?" He shrugged down at his sand-dusted uniform. "Do you have proof?"

He reached a hand slowly into his pocket, lifted out the book, and tossed it to her.

She plucked carefully at the stuck pages. "Something from Façade?"

"No. The house where the replicants of Yonah and the Original lived." Her fingers fumbled and she shot him an icy look that quickly melted when she realized it wasn't a joke. He hid a smile. It was gratifying to have finally caught her off guard. "Emil took me there. Until today, I'd been waiting for him in the caverns."

She hummed distractedly, already engrossed in the diary. "Yes, you were seen with him at the desert outpost…" Her head shook, and she sat the book down and folded her hands over it. "Unit 9S, I understand that YoRHa support units such as your pod have exceptional storage which is typically filled with an on-going record of their assigned unit's activities."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm not giving you access to my pod records."

"I hadn't asked." Her smile rose, fish-eyed and humorless. "But it does make you sound like you have something to hide."

"I never got much privacy on the Bunker. I've learned to like it."

"Enough to incriminate yourself?"

"My pod records would include my biostatistics, personal maintenance logs, and other data I'm not comfortable with you having. Pascal has already said this crime doesn't match my character, and I've provided you the physical evidence of what I've been working on."

"Surely an audiovisual log would be reasonable," Theta insisted. "It's the hardest proof you could provide of where you were and what you were doing at the time. Irrefutable."

He'd suspected from her indifferent response to his presence that she had her own agenda, and that was all the proof he needed. She was trying to pin him into a corner and get something out of him. But an audiovisual log was so benign he couldn't say no without looking unreasonable. He didn't have time to get caught up in her games—he had to get back to V and get him out of the city before all of this exploded on the both of them.

Pascal said it was maybe 32 hours ago. That was…nowhere near 3 AM. He could risk it.

"Fine," he relented. "What's the exact time it happened?"

Anemone turned back to the crowd and dipped her head in a 'come on' gesture. 9S wasn't sure if he wanted to roll his eyes or groan or both when he saw who approached, but he kept his expression flat and wary.

"YoRHa," said Cypress.

"Date and time," he answered gruffly.

Her eyes blackened. He had no doubt she still hated him with every joule of energy radiating from her fusion reactor. "6 March 11946. 9:36 PM."

"Pod, provide audiovisual logs from that time."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

A screen opened, showing the Pod's location at the time. A cavern, obviously far, far underground, with a single ray of light to see by. 9S was sprawled on the moss next to a rod covered in masks that bore the one-of-a-kind likeness of Emil's grin. He was working silently but intently on several readouts that were clearly related to Cruel Oath and the data it held. His mouth was slightly ajar, lips moving in twitches that had nothing to do with forming sounds.

9S felt heat rise through his systems. It was benign, but the invasion of a moment that he believed he had to himself was embarrassing on a guttural level.

"Are we done?"

"Yes, yes…" said Theta. 9S thought she sounded just a little disappointed. Or maybe bored. "Irrefutable proof."

Cypress scowled. "That's it? That could be from any time!"

"No, it couldn't," Gamma countered. "YoRHa units lack the authority to tamper with pod logs. I'm sure he's capable of hacking it, but that functionality was disabled in the field well before any details were provided."

"Well then, I believe the matter of 9S' innocence settled," said Pascal, who rose and came around the table. "I understand that this may be bold from one in part responsible for putting you in this situation… but your assistance would be appreciated. Bringing the perpetrator to justice is a common goal."

9S flexed his fingers he ran a quick internal check to restore his systems back to default operation. "I don't care about justice. They disturbed 2B's body. Just give me some time and I'll be sure to bring you theirs."

"If you kill them," Theta warned coolly. "I will take that as interference with the investigation of an officer's death."

"So what?" he spat. "The war is over! Even if it wasn't, you aren't my commander. With A2's version of the weapon out of play, that—" He jabbed his hand toward the sword, gleaming silently on the table. "Is definitely the 4O weapon 2B's operator gave her as a gift. I'm sure you understand how finding out it's been stolen and used to kill two androids might be personal to me."

"I am not designed to account for personal matters when making executive decisions. No good command model is." She ran her fingers experimentally along the sword's blunt edge. "However, if personal matters are important to you, there is a detail maybe related and maybe unrelated to this case that may interest you."

He did his best to brace himself without visibly moving.

"Rho did some field work with Jackass before moving on to investigating the park fire. She found a scanner."

"And? Jackass told me she'd be looking for scanner parts."

"He isn't parts. His black box signal is still active." Theta rose and strolled around 9S, eyeing him with the detached interest of a predator that wasn't hungry at that particular moment. "With your cooperation, it can stay that way."

The world seemed to gray out at the edges. His aural readout picked up his voice as usual, but it sounded far away. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you should think carefully about what Jackass might do to him if you aren't around to keep her in check."

Anemone cleared the table before he could do anything to let out the black violence that filled his every thought. How could she—how dare she hold another scanner's life over him like it was some expendable pawn to help her get whatever it was she wanted out of him. He'd kill her, **he'd kill her**—

Anemone's arm over his mouth prevented him from actually saying any of that. He saw her glare at Theta as she dragged him away from them, toward the camp's entrance. Some small part of him understood that she'd just rescued him from a trap, but the moment she loosened his grip on him, he shoved her away.

"What the hell." He clutched at his arms, felt his every wire trembling with rage beneath the surface. "Is that why you kept looking at me like you were so fucking sorry? Because you knew Jackass found a living scanner and you never told me? Were you ever going to tell me? Is it 4S? Do you even know who that is? Or was it just fine to do whatever with him without even knowing his goddamn designation because he's YoRHa?"

"9S…"

"Stop it. Don't use that tone on me." He laughed in dry, bitter heaves. He thought he was going to vomit. "I should've known. If it's to keep the peace around here, you'll let anything happen. Whether it's letting Devola or Popola do jobs that could kill them or ignoring what happens in the coliseum… You just stand there and look troubled and do nothing!"

"_9S!_" Her hands dropped on his shoulders. The combination of her tight grip and the way she bent to look him in the eye so he could see the shame and anger creasing her features was enough to make him pause. Her words came through loud and terribly clear even though her voice was barely above a whisper. "I know about the other YoRHa you've been with."

"…What?"

"I met Pod 042 a few months ago. He told me he was surveying for you, but I don't think I've ever seen you come here with him in all the months you've been here." She took a deep breath. Her eyes had had a weary uncertainty to them, but if she was unsure, it didn't come across in her words. "Balm told me she saw you and Pod 042 with another male YoRHa model in the forest kingdom a few times."

9S remained silent, but he could feel his body bunching and tensing again, and he took a long, measured breath.

"No one else knows," Anemone assured him in a hush. "I didn't tell Theta or Pascal."

"What are you asking in return?"

"Nothing. I'm suggesting that you take me up on my old offer." She pulled Virtuous Contract from her hip but didn't immediately hand it over to him. "Stay in the camp. Help Theta find the real culprit."

9S ran his hands slowly over his face. He wasn't angry with Balm; she was always on her own side. He could easily imagine her catching wind of YoRHa involvement in a murder and pre-emptively reporting to Anemone to keep herself out of trouble. Anemone could have done anything with that information, but she chose to keep it to herself and stick her own neck out to warn him. She was trying so hard to help him hold on to this secret without even asking why.

More time would have been welcome, but he had to say something to her, and the story he told her had to be consistent with whatever he was going to tell the rest of them later.

He couldn't say V was a scanner. It was too easily disproved. But there was no unit type that made sense for him and would also eliminate him as a suspect. An H unit who failed its own repairs to the point of needing a cane was suspicious. A B unit was the most implicating thing he could've been, and a D with such a weak constitution didn't make any sense.

Plus, there was Theta to think of. She and Gamma were aggressively aware of how YoRHa operated from model functionality to their peripherals and the organization as a whole. Male models were all scanners, and to try and say anything otherwise would probably out the lie immediately. Even if he tried to play V off as Variable, or as a YoRHa at all, he would sound experimental. Given how keen she was on 9S, that would make him far too interesting to her.

"He's not YoRHa," he said. That, at least, was true. "But he is my friend."

"Yeah, I followed up with Anthurium. He told me the guy means a lot to you, which is why I'm reserving judgment. Can you promise me he's innocent?"

The 4O sword was lightweight but it was still an android weapon. V wasn't weak in a fight, but lifting heavy objects wasn't in his skillset.

Plus, he wouldn't have left Cypress alive. "It wasn't him, Anemone."

"…Okay." She pressed Virtuous Contract into his palm and folded his hands over the hilt. "Then this is my trust I'm giving you, 9S."

He believed her. But he also believed how easily that could change if the truth came out. Even if she stood by him, there was a high chance it would get her killed if V was revealed as a human.

He caught her cloak as she started to head back into camp. "Wait. I need to know… Why didn't you tell me about the scanner?"

Again, her eyes filled with that pinched, apologetic look that made her seem ancient and exhausted. "…You'll understand when you see him."

9S let her go, and his eyes fell on the disused room that Anemone had once gifted to him and 2B. "Tell Theta I'll stay and help. I need a few minutes alone. After that I want to see him."

"I'll arrange it. Take your time."


	48. Spiraling Down

V stirred awake to find the fire out, the shack chilled, and the thin cotton resistance shirt drenched in his sweat. The details of a dream he knew was of the house evaporated as he pushed the covering of dampened pelts away.

The cold eagerly stole the heat from his body. As the minutes passed, it finally permeated deep enough to raise goosebumps on his skin and chase a sneeze from him. A good sign—he wasn't burning yet. He shambled from the mattress to the bench, where he sagged down and let his head fall back. With a soft sigh, he closed his eyes. Not to sleep, but to think.

Time was once again his enemy.

He should have noticed that first emergent evidence of change in him. The lullaby. Outside of warped strains heard through the filter of his nightmares, he had never come close to recalling it. Then all of the sudden he had hummed the melody unaware while his mind traced the ancient impression of his mother's voice.

According to Pod, that was fifty days after the gods had turned the earth of his memory in their search for something they believed would break his will. Griffon had begun to suspect something was wrong with him sixty days out and V had finally accepted that something was amiss eighty-eight days out while sitting atop the park castle with 9S. By then the crypts and coffins and cobwebbed places in his memory were releasing so many strange ghosts he couldn't brush it off anymore. Mid-January brought Nelo Angelo's sword and Pod 153's distress signal and stole his attention away from what were, in hindsight, several worsening symptoms. By the time he returned to the ruins with 9S, he was already deep in the grip of the fever.

The sickness he endured after escaping the gods and the one creeping through him now were the same. Memories, exertions of demonic magic, physical malaise… the salt. It was a cycle, fueled by the very substance that kept him whole.

And it was happening faster.

Thirteen days, and he was burning again. Not as intensely as before, though in exchange he was plagued by a new symptom that bothered him far more than the rest. It was a prickle on his skin and agitation of his teeth that he couldn't sooth no matter what he ate or drank. It was maddening in the exact same way the heat had been before he went off last time. Another trigger state couldn't be more than a few more days away.

"Time," he murmured into the half-light.

"2:03 AM," answered Pod 042.

He hadn't heard from 9S at all yesterday. The day before that, his new companion had been prohibitively and inconsolably clingy owing to android presence she'd noted in the park. He threw his coat on. Fever or no, it was barely March. The whiff of spring air that had come with the fog had been chased out by cold so brutal that the ocean spray froze and fell over the broken pier as snow.

Griffon carried him up to the empty tracks, bypassing the section that ran over the shack for a more lonesome bend where they could be assured they were alone. Pod raised his antenna as V lowered himself. He was already occupied with what he would do if they didn't hear anything, so it surprised him when 9S' low, hurried voice came through the speakers.

"_This won't reach you until tomorrow. I'm not in any danger, I don't think, but I don't have a lot of time. I probably won't for a while. Let me start from the beginning:_

_"I got to talk to Emil. He couldn't remember anything important about that woman, but he took me to the Original's house. Can you believe that? It's buried way underground. _

_"When I got back to the surface I got arrested. 6 March 11946. 9:36 PM. A high-rank Army of Humanity officer was killed in the amusement park with a rare YoRHa weapon." _His voice hardened. _"One that belonged to 2B._

_"I've already proved my innocence, but it's a big deal and both sides of the peace treaty are working on finding the killer. I think we both know who did it. The park machines are being questioned and eventually one of them is going to mention you. I'm sorry; I know you were supposed to be safe there. I didn't expect this much interfacing between the androids and machines._

_"Anemone already found out about you from Balm and Anthurium. I told her you're not YoRHa and that it wasn't you. She believes me, but I doubt anyone else is going to._

_"I don't think we should communicate for a while. Theta is trying to get into my data. I still don't know why, but if she gets it… Better that I don't know where you are or what you're doing. _

_"I'm going to help with the investigation. Try to steer them off your trail. Get what you need from that unit and get away from her before the evidence piles up."_

There was a pause.

_"They also uhm—they found another scanner, too. A YoRHa one. Just like me. …O-obviously, not like there's any other kind. His black box activity is suspended, though. He's not technically dead, but his systems are all..." _

_"…Sorry. That's not your concern and this is going on too long. Take care, V."_

Griffon shuffled his wings with a grumble and gave his voice to match V's silent scowl. "What a pain in the ass. Why would lady-bot kill some big wig?"

"Because they were in the park. Wiping her own memory may have freed her of the weight of killing her comrades, but I doubt it freed her from an instinct to dispose of anything that endangers her mission." Which was him, regardless of his personal take on the matter.

"V SHOULD FOLLOW UNIT 9S' PROPOSAL. CONCLUDE AFFAIRS WITH THE UNDESIGNATED UNIT QUICKLY AND ALLOW PUNITIVE PROCESS TO TAKE ITS COURSE."

"We shall see." He climbed to his feet. The roller coaster tracks held no peril for him without the cars, and he let Shadow carry him along its gentler slopes without concern. "Turning her over no longer means reclaiming 9S, not with another scanner he may be able to salvage."

"What, you really think he wouldn't come as soon as you called?" Griffon cawed. "He jumps at every chance to be around you, he almost melted down when you told him to piss off for a while!"

"Because he had nothing else. Now he does." He thumbed at the ridges under the handle of his cane. "How severe is suspension?"

"SUSPENSION OF BLACK BOX ACTIVITY SHUTS DOWN ALL OTHER FUNCTIONS TO FOCUS ON LIFE-PRESERVATION. THIS INCLUDES SHUTTING DOWN MEMORY STORAGE. RECOVERY IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE, BUT IT IS UNLIKELY THE UNIT WILL RETAIN THEIR MEMORY."

"Can it be recovered similar to the way the E model keeps recovering her memory?"

"UNKNOWN. MEMORY AND CONSCIOUSNESS REGION INTERACTIONS VARY ACROSS UNITS, AND THE METHOD USED TO CLEAR THE MEMORY REGION AFFECTS RECALL POTENTIAL."

"In English, soda-can!"

"ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN," Pod 042 said with a hint of tetchiness. "THE BLACK BOX IS POORLY UNDERSTOOD ALIEN BIO-TECHNOLOGY FITTED INTO AN ANDROID-COMPATIBLE INTERFACE. EVERY ATTEMPT TO BYPASS THE SHIELDING OF A MACHINE CORE ENDED WITH BURNT OUT ANDROIDS OR THE COMPLETE ANNIHILATION OF AN ENTIRE ORBITAL BASE. RESULT: THE LIMITATIONS OF BLACK BOX FUNCTIONALITY ARE UNKNOWN."

"So they don't know what they're messing with. Great! I guess the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree and androids are just as stupid as humans! No offense to you, V."

V gave a subtle smile. They crested the last hill and sailed easily down to the platform, where the android once known as 8E jumped to meet him.

It hadn't dawned on him until she was up and following him around like a lost kitten that having a new android companion meant having to teach someone all the same things he'd taught the scanner. And some things he hadn't. 9S' eagerness could be tiresome, but he kept a certain distance, both physically and otherwise, that had made him easy to relax around well before trust had entered the equation.

8E liked to come so close he could feel heat rolling off of her, and as a result the very first command he'd given her once her repairs were complete was 'Get out'. That wasn't an energy he was willing to sleep around.

The platform was her location of choice to wait for him.

She had taken it upon herself to bathe. It didn't do much for the aura of mania that radiated from her like the ambient buzz of a neon light, but at least she no longer reeked of old blood and crude oil. Her face was open and clean, and her over-bright eyes bored into a point slightly askew of his.

He planted his cane at his side. "You're cheerful, for someone who killed one of her own."

The jittery energy vanished from her. "…You know?"

"Heard it through the grapevine," Griffon jeered. "For all that bullshit you went through to yank V outta the frying pan, you sure did chucking him straight into the fire."

"I was trying to keep him _safe_."

"Then you lack imagination," said V. "Or did it only dawn on you afterward that killing an android would draw more?"

"It was all I could think to do." She shuffled from foot to foot and her fingers twisted around one another. Her eyes meandered beyond him, to a portion of the stairwell railing that hadn't been broken the last time V was there. "There were three of them. They were looking for something in the fog and the one in front said she could see it."

She wandered slowly toward the center of the platform with her head raised, like a bloodhound following a difficult scent. "It's somewhere around here, isn't it? That sword."

V narrowed his eyes. So _that_ was why she lingered on the platform.

"If they found it, they would have taken it away. I couldn't let that happen." She trotted back to his side, leaning eagerly toward him with wide, beseeching eyes. "Strange androids shouldn't know about you—they shouldn't know _anything _about you. Wasn't that right?"

"Yes." He pushed the cane against her chest and forced her back. "But that doesn't mean killing them was ideal. You endangered an armistice."

"It's not like I killed a machine…"

His lips pressed thin. YoRHa and their complicated place in the order of machines and androids had nothing to do with her as she was now. In her eyes, she had merely taken another android's life for a greater purpose; one that had already been killed for in thousands of convoluted ways. She could not be made to understand the problem unless he made her aware of what she was.

"They'll be back," he said, resigning to let the matter go. "And I cannot afford to waste time avoiding detection right now."

"Let's make ourselves scarce then. We'll find somewhere else! And I'll be sure to stick close and keep you safe."

"_You_ will be sure to go ahead of me and wait at the ravine," he corrected. "We'll start by handling our business there."

"PROPOSAL: RENDEZVOUS OUTSIDE THE SHOPPING COMPLEX, SO THAT DESCENT CAN OCCUR SIMULTANEOUSLY."

She looked uncertainly from Pod 042 to V, who waved her off with a flick of his cane and ran a hand through his hair when she had gone.

He'd hoped to avoid exactly this kind of behavior by limiting his exposure to other androids and keeping his humanity a secret. Fools of human and demonic descent alike had worshipped Sparda. While he understood that reverence, he had never been keen on receiving similar treatment. But he would have to bear her overzealousness awhile longer.

Another devil trigger was coming, whether it was today or the next or the one after that. Whenever it came, it would likely be just as abortive and draining as the first. In that vulnerable state where even his familiars could not help him, he needed someone. For as long as 9S stayed in the resistance camp, it would have to be 8E.

That was the safest thing for both of them until all of this was settled.

"QUERY: WHY DID V NOT ACCOMPANY THE UNDESIGNATED UNIT TO THE POINT OF INTEREST?"

He lifted his arm to Griffon and gestured toward the distant forest on the northeast horizon. "We're going to secure an insurance policy first."

The click of V's cane halted in the center of the abandoned mall. Wisps of steam from his body joined the steady puffs of his breath as he raised his head. His gaze skimmed side to side as if reading from an invisible page, though sight had taken a firm back seat to a more specific sense. Keener than hearing, but subtler than taste. He almost forgave his amnesiac acquaintance her unsettling commentary on how she found the golden orb. The closer he came to the ravine, the more strongly he felt it; like the pause between lightning and the ensuing rumble of thunder given physical presence.

Demons.

This world, plagued by malevolent but banished gods and sipping on scant remnants of magic, had never known true devils. With no humans around for well over five thousand years, this should not have been a world that they concerned themselves with. There was nothing to be gained. Nothing to draw power from. But something had perforated the space between the dimensions, and they had seeped through like air escaping through a punctured lung.

It was too implausible to be a coincidence that the only devil hunter on the planet was nearby. Humility had likely come from a similar perforation—one even smaller than this perhaps—and V had a sense that his presence played a part. Even if it was one he did not yet fully understand.

He joined the former E unit where she crouched at the cliff's edge, staring down into the depths. She'd tied her hair back with a tattered length of black cloth V recognized as a YoRHa visor. He didn't ask. No need to bring attention to it if she thought of it as a convenient accessory she happened to have on her person.

She shuffled to make more room for him. "The orb was there, right by the falls. When I tried to leave with it, this huge black thing came at me. I grabbed a weapon and cut through it, but it didn't do anything. So I just ran." She rose to her feet, her eyes still avoiding his as she turned her head in his direction. "I need a designation. So you can call me for help—if you need to. Whatever you want's fine, I'll answer."

"Choose it yourself."

"A name is supposed to be given to you, isn't it?"

He swung the tip of the cane up to point at her chest. "_You_ lost your name. Whether you reclaim it or replace it, that's your business."

Pod 042 dropped between them, ever the peacekeeper. "PROPOSAL: TANSY."

"Sounds like a kid's name," she huffed. Her head swiveled as she scanned every bit of local foliage looking for something that didn't offend her tastes. Options were limited—it was still winter. "Fern. There were humans named Fern, right?"

He rolled his eyes and leaped into the gorge.

The grumble of the waterfall swallowed the light splash of V's landing. Piles of white rubble and machine corpses towered and slumped against the ravine walls, broken up only by the scattered black android parts jutting from them. The portal was so small that he couldn't make it out, but he could feel it like a torn membrane in the air. The cold had given way to humid balminess that reeked of fresh blood and spoiled meat as only hell did.

'Fern' landed just behind him, assisted by Pod 042. In one brisk motion, she secured two plain steel blades from among the YoRHa corpses and came to his side. In the same way that she was unusually focused atop the cliff, the way she moved and behaved now that they were in danger was a far cry from the skittish tics he'd grown used to. With her attention focused on combat, Fern was calculated and predatory as a stalking crane.

As they approached the falls, a single hollow machine head bounced down from one of the piles. Laughter broke the stillness, and V's grip on his cane tightened. He knew that sound. A blush of excited heat washed through him, distinct from the warmth of his maso fever. It heralded an unfamiliar eagerness; a harried need to find and kill every last demon that had successfully made the crossing.

Fern spun. Her two blades clashed against the twin segments of a jagged pair of scissors in a hot shower of sparks. Pale mannequin fingers held them from beneath a billowing cloak as black as the absent nights. At the very top of the looming shape was not a porcelain mask but the front plate of a machine head.

He offered slow, amused applause. "Quite an adaptation…"

She grunted, bracing her legs even as her feet slid in the slick stream-bottom. She heaved forward with a shout. The demon fled backward and vanished into the canyon wall. She placed herself between it and him with her swords at the ready. "That's the one I fought before. Is there some trick to killing it?"

"Aim for the head." He turned back toward the falls. "I leave it to you."

"What?! Wait—!"

Another clash of shears on swords drowned her protest. V pressed on.


	49. Infernal Descent

Fern would catch up quickly now that she knew where to aim her strikes. A single pair of sin scissors was not an overly daunting prospect if one knew their weakness.

It was not the only demon to have found a suitable form to inhabit.

Machines clambered from the piles. Most were missing limbs. Some lacked bodies altogether and only their heads rolled along the ravine, crashing into one another to destroy their metallic plating and reveal the ghastly, gnashing structures beneath. Not one among the hoard bore red eyes or light of any kind in their empty sockets. They were lifeless down to the last. An annoyance for certain to see so many of them, but it was a good sign. If all they could manage was the possession of dead metal, the dividing lines between the worlds were still strong.

One of the heads leaped at V. Shadow drove a spike through its mouth. It predictably fell to pieces, but the thing within just moved to another shell. Minor as these demons were, his nightmares still had no ability to kill them.

This time he had a different asset on his hands with no such limitation.

"_Sitzflesich_." The black boundary of the gravity well dropped from Pod 042 with a low hum. Bound in their metal shells, the demons were dragged into a tight pile along with a hefty chunk of the inert garbage parts surrounding them.

"_Alekhine_." The laser illuminated the canyon in a brief flash. From the destroyed masses of shrapnel left behind, red sparks filled the air and coalesced into familiar red crystals.

Another wash of heat under his ribs dizzied him and forced him to one knee.

The crystals bobbed toward him against the flow of the stream. Demonic magic was almost magnetic by nature, and he represented the greatest pool of it. They nestled and pressed and melted against his skin, running like red wax before vanishing. The energies within were minuscule, but he had gone so long without that each one was as keenly felt as a rush of adrenaline. Having finally found a suitable target, his newest symptom showed itself for what it was.

Hunger.

"I see..." he panted, climbing back to his feet. Low snickering shook his shoulders. The demonic element may have kept him effortlessly whole, but it bore little resemblance to the magic of the underworld. So, this was the source of his cravings.

Screams of laughter bounced off the cliffs behind him. The sin scissors were dealt with, and a flood of blood-warm magic seeped through any and every inch of his exposed skin. Fern launched by him, tossing one broken sword and snatching another to enforce control on the swarm of rolling, bouncing heads and crawling machine torsos. Between her and Griffon's bursts of electricity V sauntered through their remains, piercing them as he went and bathing in their magic as it liquefied against his skin.

The possessed machines converged on him as he drew closer to the waterfall. At his whistle, Griffon hauled him straight into the air and Shadow erupted from beneath his feet into a thistle-like mass. He made a light-footed landing atop a single spike that flattened to receive him. The air around him brightened with shining violet needles in the shape of his cane, and with a wave, they flew to finish the pests pinned upon the blackened spikes.

Shadow ushered him back to the ground, where he threw the cane over his shoulder and cocked an ear.

Barring Fern's breath as she cut through another machine, and the rustle of crystals shuffling toward him, the ravine was quiet once more.

"Tired already?" he asked.

She wiped her mouth and slipped one sword through her belts, keeping the other on hand. "Not as much as I expected. Is it over?"

"Seems to be the case."

"Talk about small-fry," Griffon hooted. "Minus old scissor-hands, they couldn't even take their own forms!"

"What _are_ they?" Fern asked, eyeing the piles warily.

"Demons. Residents of the underworld." He approached the edge of the pool beneath the falls. The gap was tiny, as he thought. They should be safe from any surprised for long enough to search.

He walked the basin's edge. The red orbs were more than he expected but far less than he hoped. Another gold orb would have gone a long way to ensuring his next trigger didn't leave him helpless, but even the lesser crystallizations were absent. Persistence rewarded him, however. Something glimmered and bobbed where the ripples met the frost, in a shape so familiar that he forgot his cane and knelt to thrust his hand into the water. The cold barely registered, nor the sliminess of wet mud seeping through his clothing and soaking his knee as he sat staring at the silver loop in his palm.

Nelo Angelo's sword was one thing, but why _this_?

"You alright over there, V?" Griffon fluttered closer and settled on his shoulders. The weight was familiar and grounding enough to make him aware he'd been holding his breath. "What are you gettin' all distracted for? It's just a bracelet."

"...This was my mother's."

"You still remember the kind of bling she wore? Never mind, of course you do momma's boy, my mistake, forgot who I was talking to. So now the list of weird shit that's showed up here from our neck of the woods includes the contents of your old lady's jewelry box. The hell is it even doing here? It doesn't feel like it comes from the Underworld."

V didn't fully agree. At the front of the ornate band was a circle that resembled a clock face with a crescent motif. A dozen modest gemstones aligned on its edges, but the center housed a butterfly frozen in glass rather than any hands by which to tell time. The bracelet was definitely magical in nature. Empty and disused so many years after the death of its owner, but the echo of the powerful thing it must have been lingered.

Vergil had put many things far from his mind over the years, but deep down, he must have speculated that Eva was not some common witch to have stood beside Sparda and guarded the amulets.

V braced himself on his cane and stood, his eyes locking on to the space where the veils had abraded. As ants could infiltrate the smallest crack, so to would these weaklings continue to swarm if it was left there. "We should close this."

"Good luck with that." His weight lifted from V's shoulders. "This ain't some hell gate you can conveniently destroy and be done with it. Humans have never been able to keep demons from coming through little holes like this."

"This human world and the one which was once split from the demon world are not the same. The Underworld is not linked to this place—it has no claim to it. Closing a hole this small should not prove impossible, even for me."

"Alright, that's half of a good point, but how exactly are you gonna make this happen?"

The Yamato would have made the job of separating the worlds trivial, but naturally, the one time he wanted to use it for precisely what it was good at, he didn't have it. Sparda had dedicated an entire tower and to the process, but that was one of the largest portals in existence on ground where the veil was already thin. After a lifetime spent finding ways to tear portals open, V had no idea what magic was needed to begin closing one.

If his theory about the bracelet was true, his memory might contain a fitting answer.

He wandered to a nearby block of tower debris and settled down. Griffon perched at its corner and peered down at him. "Got a plan?"

"I will need to sleep on it to be sure."

"Sleep?" Fern cried. "Here? What about the demons? What if they come back?"

V pulled up the oversized hood, draped his arms across his cane, and closed his eyes. "Then return them to hell."

* * *

_There were books upon the highest shelves he could not reach and rarely read. They were complicated, and in a different language whose alphabet he had only mastered recently. Sometimes his mother read the passages out loud to him. In her fluent tongue, they sounded like music. In his, they sounded like noise. Their words spoke of magic and devils, but not the kind he would later find existed._

_There was no Underworld in those tomes, only its mirror: The Inferno._

_Its denizens were all either women who had fallen to hell and risen to power as demons, or the ancient kind from the sundering of the realms into light and dark. They were sequestered from the Underworld, a dimension away both in hell and on earth. Their pleasure was to battle forces of light beyond those humanity could muster—beautiful entities with shells of porcelain and gold to hide that they were made of tumorous, pulsing flesh beneath their guises._

_The Underworld's affairs did not concern them. There was no revolving door of kings nor bids for domination. The Inferno's single stygian throne had been occupied by one indomitable queen-being since hell's creation._

_They spoke to humans, consorted with them, and shared power and knowledge with them in contracts much more complex than the one V had with his familiars. And their power could be called on, if you knew the tongue and had the magic._

_Neither of them would read that heavy material today, though._

_He gazed through the open door at the high, bright clouds and the crayon bright shape of the playground at the bottom of the hill. He'd always coveted the rare moments when the world was just the two of them and the quiet but wondered where his younger twin was. Dante excelled at getting into trouble._

_Above him, his mother's expression was further away than usual, her head held high despite deep lines under her eyes. He didn't remember much of his father, but he remembered a more vital version of her. The tired trails tracked on her features had not always been there._

_He squeezed her hand and told her he would go outside and play._

_That way, Dante would come to find him before he disturbed Eva's sleep. If Dante wanted to fight, he would do it. If they got hurt, he would make sure Dante didn't cry (and that he would keep his composure and not cry at all). Their mother needed rest, and he was the older twin; he would take care of everything._

_'He' was only a child and didn't perceive the things that V did._

_A flicker of dread she hid behind a smile. The deliberate tenderness with which she let go of his hand and ran her fingers through his hair. She locked away a dozen private melancholies as quickly and simply as if she was closing heavy doors on a cabinet of fragile, blue-veined porcelain. To 'him', tall these things were obscured by the way she kneeled to hug him tight and press an energetic kiss to his cheek. It was the same as it ever was when she saw either of them leave the house. Nothing special was said or done._

_Even though in just a few hours, the house would burn._

* * *

The light hadn't changed. It never did and V never accustomed to how jarring it was to have sunlight and be unable to judge the passage of time by it. Instead, it was the soreness of his limbs and the sweat damping his body and the sucking cold of the towerfall at his back told him he had been sitting there for hours. Through the muffling fabric that lined the hood, he heard Fern casually cutting a machine down and Griffon's light snore.

He flipped the hood back and rapped his knuckles on the blue eagle's beak.

"Hungh?" He stretched and shook himself off with a yawn. "Wazzat…? You figure something out?"

V unfolded and rose stiffly back to his feet. Slowly, he began to trace letters in the dirt with his cane. They were still fuzzy in his mind but seeing them forced them toward clarity. He mumbled along with each, letting his tongue remember its way around their forms.

"Not to interrupt you, but you wanna let the rest of the class know what you're working on, V?"

"It's Enochian." He scuffed out a letter and retraced it. "I'm not fluent, but I should be able to manage an Umbran spell."

"Hmm… Yeah, cool, cool, great idea." He batted V's hood with a wing. "Except the part where you're fucking crazy! You can't just go knocking on the Inferno's door like that; they don't involve themselves in matters of the Underworld!"

"If this isn't their concern now, it will be." He looked down at the bracelet, still safe in his palm. "And the dividing line may not be so uncrossable for me."

"Ok, ok, even if you can do this, I'm like 95% sure you're male, V. That witch thing you told boy-bot was hilarious, best joke you've ever made, but you're not actually an Umbran Witch!"

"What's an Umbran Witch?" asked Fern.

They both shot her cold looks, but Griffon was too riled up to not answer. "It's a lady who can call on the Inferno's power without getting turned inside out. Which V, you might have noticed, is _not_."

V smoothed his hair back, his mouth twisting in annoyance. "I know, Griffon."

"Are you sure, cause I feel like if you really understood what you're proposing, you'd think about it more than not fuckin' at all."

The head of the cane flicked up and lodged squarely between the eagle's split jaws. "A hole big enough for at least one pair of sin scissors appeared and it was swarming with formless. We're closing it."

Griffon tilted his head as V let him go with no more than that, his six pupils all examining him quizzically. He didn't blame his nightmare for being upset. Even if Eva was Umbran, that didn't necessarily mean anything for Vergil or Dante, and might not mean anything at all for V.

"You're the boss… I just don't get why you'd risk it."

The silver pushed pink dents into his pale palm. The more certain he was it was real, the harder his heart thumped in his chest. These were not just artifacts of his life; they were lost pieces of his history falling through time and dimension just as nonsensically as he had. They brought him no ease, and if they were meant to guide him home, he hadn't figured out how. Adding demons to the matter didn't help. He didn't want to think of what else might come through.

Or acknowledge the knot that settled above his navel and wrung his insides like wet rags at the thought of demons finding 9S as they had once found him.

"Why, indeed."

Griffon shuffled his wings and took off, grousing under his breath about how he'd warned him and couldn't wait to lay on the 'told you so's if the shit went sideways. Fern looked between the two of them with wide, confused eyes.

"I-I'm with Griffon," said Fern. "If it's dangerous, you can just leave it. It's not hard to kill them after you know how."

From the corner of his eye, V saw Griffon make a wide gesture in Fern's direction as if to say 'see, even she thinks this is stupid'. He smirked and waded into the pool. "Your apprehension is noted."

"Wait! Is… Is there anything I can do to help?"

V cocked his head and extended his hand. "Your sword."

Like the YoRHa models themselves, the utilitarian blade bore the dimensions of the thing it mimicked but was far heavier. No matter. He didn't have to swing it to slice his palm.

Fern jumped back, her expression queasy as she paced back and forth across the stream. "Ohh, you shouldn't—you really shouldn't do that."

V ignored her and got to work. Healing was not a rapid process for him, but it had accelerated of late, and beneath the flow of blood he felt a telltale itch of flesh bridging. The symbols traced floated stable atop the ripples without dissipating. Water was among the better conduits to hell, somewhere below mirrors but above porcelain dolls, and he could feel the transformation from mere pattern to shape of power as he pushed his magic through.

In broken Enochian, he called forces of forbiddance and directed them into an incantation. _"VONIL DAZI NANAMA SOV NIMAN."_

The circle pulsed in violet, tracing the shape of the crescent moon onto the water and reflecting onto the air where the demons had found entry.

A tug on his senses snatched his concentration. At first, he suspected a demon was trying to worm through before he finished the spell. Then the heat came. Like a furnace had been opened inside of him, it stoked within his chest until he could barely breathe. His tattoos scattered and Griffon vanished with them. His vision tunneled, and with little more but a failing breath that vented into the air in a cloud far too big for his body, he fell forward into the water. He should have heard the roar of the falls and see bubbles rising around him.

There was none. Only darkness and the cacophonous but fleeting toll of bells.

Their peals went almost as abruptly as they had come so that he found himself straining to hear them. In their place, a laugh slithered along the back of his neck. He found himself suspended by his hood before something so vast he could not make out more than an iridescent shimmer of green, like the shell of a scarab.

His heart punched against his ribs in a desperate bid for escape that the rest of his body did not respond to. He had expected a simpler backlash. A fatal wound or a dangerous depletion of his magic—some sensible punishment for being too bold with the powers of the Underworld's twin realm. Instead, he had cast bait into a sea full of sharks and managed to catch leviathan.

A claw the size of his arm and the color of wine curled under his chin. "How nostalgic the audacity you have inherited, little carcass..."

His throat bobbed against the vicious curve. Did she know him? It was possible Sparda's legend was known even in the Inferno. The claw retracted, and the tension around the back of his hood released. He drifted, certain despite the silence that she was still there until her vast presence passed him by, tossing him in her wake the way a blade of grass is tossed by an indifferent hurricane. Only her voice, underlaid by the whispers of innumerable insect wings, lingered in the dark with him.

_"Beware the wretched song that wreathes thy brittle bones."_


	50. The Black Basin

V's feet eventually found solid ground. It was staying upright on them that posed a problem. He couldn't see the state his body was in, but he felt the shudders of muscles ready to give at the slightest disturbance and a bone-deep misery whose only mercy was that it involved surprisingly little pain. This assault was one of hot and cold stuttering against his senses like a faulty engine, and shortness of breath that left him too weak to even try to push on. If he could just rest, just for a moment—

The thought had barely finished before he found himself floating again. Pieces of him fell away. Alarm managed a flutter in his chest, but that too began to fall apart. This had to be hell. He had to be dying.

If he wanted to blame someone for this, he could only point at himself. Something less than a demon but not merely human and a witch by no accounts had no business commanding Umbran magic. At least he'd left the truth about YoRHa's final protocol in safe hands. Ones 9S would trust.

He felt himself spreading. Breaking apart like a porcelain doll being shattered in slow motion. It was painless, for once in his life. Everything disintegrated and sloughed away like…

Like salt. If he died there with maso laced through his form, it would be one world closer to finding a new host.

His body snapped back into shape and the pain was enough that his bit into his lip. No blood spilled from the wound, but he'd take just being in one piece for now. He twisted until he found the solid ground and stood panting in the dark, clutching the bracelet that had come with him in lieu of his cane.

The void remained unchanged save a sound of waves lapping at a distant, invisible shore. It resembled the place where the price for his contracts were all paid, but one endless black space did tend to resemble another that way. He didn't recall any part of hell that looked like this, but seeing as a demoness had spoken to him, he doubted he had fallen on that side of the fence.

Was this the Inferno?

A single point of light caught his attention and became an open doorway. If it was a trap, it hardly mattered. There was nowhere else for him to go. Grass sprang up around his feet as he hobbled toward it. The threshold rose, not moving out of his reach in the name of a nightmare chase, but assuming a slope he recognized. The familiarity of it added certainty to his labored steps.

Beyond the door, a thin path of well-polished plank fragments took stretched before him, ending below a familiar nook with a high, latticed window. It was the same place he'd woken up in when he first called on Nightmare. Same crimson couch, same carefully maintained shelves of books. Mercifully, the soft music that reached his ears was not the kind that would've been picked by Dante. Only one thing was not the same.

Eva lay in quiet repose against the cushions. Framed by diamonds of light and shadow, she was every bit as resplendent as he had forgotten her being. The red and black that covered her this time was only her shawl and dress.

He stepped over the threshold. In the light, he saw that his hair had gone white and his skin was clear of markings save spidery webs of cracks. Still, he was drawn further in, closer to his mother's shape. He came within arm's reach but didn't dare to touch her. Experience told him that if he did, he would be faced with the far more unpleasant memory of her bloodied and burned remains scattered on the floor.

"_Art thou but a worm…_"

"Mmm… _I see thee lay helpless and naked, weeping. And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles._" She stirred and raised a hand to her cheek. "That one was 'The Book of Thel', wasn't it…?"

He gave a short huff. What a tedious thing to endure twice. And for what? He understood his weakness already; he didn't need another vision to quote at him about it. He pulled a book from the well-stocked shelves, certain that it would be empty just like the last time.

Crisp, black words greeted him.

The calm in the room rolled over to tense silence in the space of a single held breath, while the music played on from an unseen gramophone. He grabbed another book. The texts were not the ones he kept. They were the subjects of his childhood studies on magic, as esoteric as they had been when he was eight. He could not possibly have remembered more than snippets, not enough to fill one book, much less the dozens upon the shelves.

Her voice crept over his shoulders like the cold hands of the past and raised goosebumps along the back of his neck. "Do you recall the fate of an Umbran witch who dies after contracting with a demon?"

"Her soul would be dragged to the Inferno to be tormented," he whispered. "For eternity."

"You still remember your studies."

Pride emanated from those words, enough that the shelves blurred together before his eyes. She spoke like she had every confidence he would not have forgotten. Like thirty years and so much smothered grief didn't separate then from now.

"You're not real." He wanted to turn around, but he couldn't force himself to look at her. "Just a nightmare."

"More'd be the pity for you if that were true."

"Then pitiful I must be because you don't seem particularly tormented."

"So stubborn…" She gave a modest, muffled yawn. "I contracted to a demon not of the Inferno, my fate could not be the same. Upon my death, I'd go to the one place in hell where neither demon nor demoness could reach me."

"And I'm to believe such a place exists?"

"The black basin."

The book shuddered and tipped from his fingers. As no energy in the universe could truly be created or destroyed, so it was with hell-born magic. It crystallized in the human world, and returned into the atmosphere of underworld otherwise. The basin was supposedly the primordial birthing pool it returned to; a remnant of the dark sea the first devils had risen from.

None of the past kings of the Underworld believed in it. No offer of riches or power or any vast displays of wanton cruelty had ever yielded any knowledge of it save the persevering fables of its existence.

"Only a myth." He scooped the book up and put it back where it belonged before he finally faced her. Her eyes were on him, centering him in their focus. More than any gentleness V might have remembered or hoped for, her face radiated the intense spirit that had once allowed her to keep two half-demon brats mostly behaved. Careful not to accuse me of being a liar, they said, and the memory of her wrath made him stand a little straighter. It made no sense for a human soul—even one of an umbran witch—to be in a place like the basin, but if he was there, he had to accept that she might be as well. "Even if so… Why here?"

"Complicated matters of equity between the hells. It was a novel problem, and Sparda presented a novel but practical solution…mixed with a bit of sentimentality." She smiled and pale roses flowered on her cheeks. "In his eyes, the worst thing that could happen to me was for me to become a demoness in his inevitable absence."

She sat up slowly, and despite his reservations and all the innumerable staws his mind grasped to prove she wasn't there, he was drawn like a moth by the motions of her living form. The way her hair swayed and slipped around her shoulders as she stretched, and the shifting ripples of her shawl. The way her dress folded and flowed as she leaned forward and took the bracelet from his limp fingers to turn it over in her own. The self-conscious tilt of her brows as she smiled at it.

"You were always quite curious about this," she said with unbearable fondness. "I expected you would be the one to figure it out eventually."

"It took extraordinary circumstances," he said, unsure if he meant his appearance in the ruined other earth or his very existence. "I would never have entertained the idea that you were powerful enough to use that."

"I suppose not. Fighting had never been my strongest suit even when I was young. I was more of an artificer." A small, humble grin snuck across her lips. "This was the last and greatest of these I ever made."

That bracelet could have stood among the works of Machiavelli in hell or Goldstein on earth. For his mother to have made it was astonishing. To have made more than one?

The full implications found little to no purchase. The idea that she had been here all along, in a place that neither Dante nor Vergil could ever go, had begun to sink in. It took far greater precedence and threw the orderly shelves of his mind into a storm of scattered pages.

"It weakened you." She nodded faintly. "What did it do for you to pour yourself into it that way?"

"It gave us time. Three wonderful years…" She pressed it back into his hands. "And you got to be children, like any other."

Strain ached in his temples and forced his eyes closed. The magic she emptied into it after Sparda's disappearance had done something to time. Dilated it, stopped it, displaced it, made a bubble of it around their home, he didn't know and it didn't matter; they were all equally overwhelming displays of magical prowess, and she had hidden her power in plain sight of two ferociously curious children.

He sagged onto the edge of the couch with slow care, as though it and its other occupant might disappear if he got too hasty. There must have been some purpose for all of this, but he couldn't find it in him to rush to it. He couldn't bring himself to do much more than stare at her and feel himself congealing from within at the mortification of being seen by her in this state.

"I'm sorry."

Her head tilted. "Whatever for?"

"You are… you were… everything to us—to me. And I could not protect you. Nor Dante. I could not protect anything."

"To believe a boy not yet a decade grown could shoulder that responsibility or take the blame for what happened is a demon's way of thinking." Her fingers reached to his cheek, as strong and cool and solid as ever. "I'm afraid I'm only human. To see my sons live, I would think nothing of laying down my life a thousand times."

Rosemary perfume filled his head. That was right; she had always smelled of rosemary. As their soaps did. As her candles did. The paths along their gardens were once lined by rosemary bushes. It was the humblest kind of demon repellent; such a little thing that neither he nor Dante had ever given it a second thought.

Bared to that bright light, his face reflected clearly in her eyes. Color was returning to his hair and he looked nothing like Vergil. She was his mother without room for doubt or debate, but he was the embodied dredges of all her son's attempts to discard everything she had worked herself arguably to death to provide. There was no real reason for her to know him or accept him as her own. He wasn't even true flesh and blood; just a simulacrum with no tangible claim to any of her love.

Yet she bestowed it to him anyway. It was in her every word. Permeating every gesture so fully that he felt he must be drowning.

He hunched forward and hid his face behind the intertwine of her fingers and his own. "I'm such a fool." Low, breaking laughter escaped around his words. "To think I was left behind by you... The sins I've committed…"

"You will have to bear," she completed firmly, but not unkindly.

All the breath went out of him. He nodded and gently pulled away from her. If he didn't now, he didn't know that he would have the strength to later.

Mercifully, she let him have the silence he needed to collect his thoughts. To turn them toward anything that wasn't just sitting in this saturation of warmth and safety and familiarity. Like a man gone hungry too long, he didn't have the room to handle even a fraction of what she offered.

"Did you... bring me here?"

She eyed him with a raised brow. "Me? How wastefully flattering; I was never that powerful even in life. You're made of demonic magic, yet not a demon. You found your own way to this place on the edge of death, as a river finds the sea."

Strange. He had come close before and had no such experience. Was it his proximity to the gate?

"You were always the more academic one," she continued, managing both pride and maternal reprimand. "But Umbran spells aren't for just anyone to call upon."

"I thought it a modest spell, but it must have been quite a transgression for a demoness to pay me any mind."

"A demoness? None would come personally for something so small. Did she speak to you?"

"Yes. She said a wretched song wreathed me."

"Then perhaps it was this song that made her deign to appear before you." Her fingertips pressed against the thin pulse at his wrist. The cracks in his skin were hairline now. Nearly invisible. "This energy within you is not from any reality hell could reach to. Whatever it is may keep you whole, but it uses you as you use it."

"It's a curse of some sort. I'm looking for a way to break it."

Her eyes betrayed how her worry lingered, but she nodded and brushed his hair back from his face with careless familiarity. Spying something low on his face, her thumb swiped at the corner of his mouth.

A smear of blood stained her skin. From his earlier bite, a strong taste of copper had begun to pour into his mouth.

She sighed and rose from her seat, extending her hand back to him. "It's time."

He hesitated. There was so much more to tell her. Was she aware of Mundus' death? Could she tell from here that he—that Vergil and Dante were together again?

Did she know about Nero?

There was no opportunity to tell those tales. The basin had fulfilled its purpose, and now he had to leave it and leave her.

Her hand was smaller than his now, but it belonged in the same comforting way that the Yamato had come to belong. It felt natural to be at her side, despite her crown being even with his chin and having to look down at her instead of up.

He thought numbly of his fever and the demon-possessed machine parts in the ravine and the bells as his body failed and fell. It felt like a strange dream from another life. Neither he nor 9S had ever pieced together why or how the dragon and the white giant made the crossing from their world. Under the present circumstances, they might have overthought it. The gods might not be much different in mentality than the lowliest demons, infiltrating nearby worlds as a matter of opportunity rather than an exertion of their malevolent will.

V was their newest opportunity, and the dimension he offered access to most readily was Hell.

The failed devil triggers must have had something to do with it, but he could look for a solution to that problem on his own. They had arrived and stood together hand in hand before the open door. There was no sky, no sun, no sloping path or grassy hill. There was only the endless gloom of the basin, and worried was not how he wished to leave her.

"The demoness did say one other thing." She looked at him expectantly, and he managed a smile that wasn't completely feigned. "Apparently my audacity was nostalgic."

Her laughter surrounded him like lively chimes. "That will have been the Madame of Scarabs, then! She guards time, and I was known to be brash when it came to exploring my talents as a young witch."

That was… a rather revealing glimpse into the person she'd been before she was his mother, though the way she said it left V unsure he wanted to know the details. Her laugh was boisterous like Dante's; perhaps his younger twin got his antics more honestly than he was prepared to discover.

His eyes fell and he squeezed her hand. How long had it been since he walked the paths of affectionately feigned familial distaste? He wished he had more time to savor it. The shape of the nook was fading, and the music had gone. The path there was vanishing behind them, and he knew somehow that he would never see this place again.

A part of him longed to run back. To finally come home and welcome in the humanity that he had first lost and then willingly cast out in that same place. It was a child's thought. Nothing so just would happen, and to think otherwise was to foster an ultimately pointless hope. Human or not, unexpected chance to know just how loved he had been or not, his heart remained as still and smooth and heavy as if it were made of solid glass all the way to its depths. Blood would sooner spill from a stone than water from that well.

Eva tilted his chin away from the vanishing specter of their home and held him close, surrounding him once more in warmth and rosemary, and whispered into his ear.

While his heart was still being squeezed through the cracks in her voice, she pushed him gently over the threshold like a bird from the nest. The doorframe was already immaterial. All he could do was watch her grow smaller as he floated away.

She was smiling, even as the nook and the path and the doorway and her body all scattered into violet butterflies and melted back into the dark.

* * *

V couldn't see, but he felt currents swaying around him. Bubbles tickled his face and fingers and finally, he crested the surface of the water. The falls beat down on him, biting into his legs with frigid fangs. He had to squint against the brightness of the sky and floundered as he raised his arms to block the light.

"WELCOME BACK, V."

Hell hadn't done his mind any favors. Every motion he made felt like trying to swim through mud, and his coat was soaked and heavy and dragged down his best efforts to stand up. The heat had gone out of him and the snow he had hoped for had come and gone. Beyond the falls, the endless piles of scrap metal were blanketed in white.

"What happened…?"

"REPORT: ALL ENEMIES WERE NEUTRALIZED. AFTER UNEXPECTED COLLAPSE, THIS POD REMAINED IN ATTENDANCE FOR SEVEN DAYS, FOUR HOURS, AND 23 MINUTES."

"_Seven…?"_ He stumbled and squeezed at what his addled mind had assumed to be his cane. It wasn't, and offered him none of the fore's stability, sending him back to his hands and knees in the glacial pool.

It was the bracelet, still safe in his palm. He clasped the silver loop around his wrist and stumbled out of the pool and against the cliffside. Not much of an improvement in temperature, but at least it was dry. He doubled over, his shivers increasing in intensity even as the wet clumps of his grayed hair whitened with frost before his eyes.

A maso fever would have been ideal. He wasn't going to make it far in this condition.

"Desert," he croaked through clicking teeth. "Need to get… to the desert. Fern…"

"OUT OF RANGE. AFTER 3 HOURS SPENT SEARCHING THE AREA AND 97 HOURS WAITING, UNIT FERN BECAME AGITATED AND CLAIMED SHE WOULD FIND YOU HERSELF."

His tattoos were pale, but they were there. He closed his eyes and tried to focus as he pressed his shuddering fingers to his lips and whispered into them. "I need you…"

It took longer than normal, but Shadow answered his call. He crouched and threw his arms around her, grateful for the heat she offered, and she discarded her shape entirely to wrap around him, shielding him from the worst of the winter air. It would be enough to stave off the inevitable for a while, but not by much.

He looked up at the bridge suspended high above them. "Not enough power… Can't do Griffon and Shadow…"

"THERE IS AN ELEVATOR APPROXIMATELY 330 METERS AWAY."

V forced himself upright and jostled the crystallized hairs out of his face. "Cane?"

"UNIT FERN RECOVERED IT FROM THE POOL. IT IS CURRENTLY IN HER POSSESSION."

He couldn't spare the breath to curse. He fumbled along, stumbling of over parts and bodies until he found a broken YoRHa blade sticking up through the snow. It was too heavy for him to lift but provided stable support as he dragged it alongside him.

As he waited at the elevator, he noted Pod looking back toward the falls. The gate was closed; that part of his plan had worked as intended, at least. There would be no more demons in the ravine. "Something… happen while I was gone…?"

"SOMETHING WAS IDENTIFIED DURING UNIT FERN'S SEARCH." Pod swiveled around and nudged him toward the opening doors. "HOWEVER, V SHOULD REMAIN FOCUSED ON CONSERVING ENERGY."

V had little choice but to take the pod's suggestion. He huddled into the cold, rusted iron box and tried not to fall asleep as it carried him back to the surface.


	51. Confounding

"Did we really have to do this _here_?"

"You're the one who wanted an information officer present," Cypress said, too nicely to be anything but nasty. "She didn't want to be separated from her experiment."

9S' exhaled slowly through clenched teeth. That 'experiment' was 11S, and he only looked like a corpse.

He had never seen a unit in suspension the way 11S was; technically functional but totally non-responsive. Suspension was a slower equivalent of locking down one's personality data to purge viral infection—either way the unit functionally lost their memory in the process. It was a drastic and paradoxically self-destructive measure, but there was no need to wonder why he'd done it.

Cracks in 11S' anti-magnetic skin indicated nanomachine failure. A dozen red errors glared from the monitors very time a new repair scan completed. Scorch marks and warping on his thighs suggested either a manual self-destruct or deep progression of logic virus infection leading to internal combustion. There was evidence of a replaced left arm of the correct model type, but his problems went far deeper than missing limbs.

'Beyond Reasonable Repair'. That had been the Bunker's designation for cases like this. When E units were openly assigned to combat teams, their stated job was to finish any unit that sustained damage that severe. A spare body from storage was already paid for and fully functional; repair was expensive. To let the unit shoulder the cost in days or weeks of lost memory was more cost-effective.

Pine and Jackass picked over 11S like he was some rare find from a scrap heap, but there was nothing he could do. He couldn't make himself say 'just kill him' and would have been absurd to ask them to repair him. Even if they wanted to, they didn't have the resources. And he knew already they didn't care about that.

Their goal was only to get him to a state passable enough for a partial reboot. To activate his intact but inert hacking components. His body and will did not matter. Any discomfort he might or might not have been feeling did not matter. Only their access to his intact hacking functionality mattered. He might as well have been dead.

Jackass wrestled her goggles up and glowered over his body. "You got something to say, or you just gonna gawk?"

He sighed and re-directed his attention to Cypress. She was all smiles, the source of her glee as transparent as it was spiteful. With Gamma standing to one side, she wasn't going to try anything physical, but the sooner he got this over with, the sooner he could get away from her.

Not too soon, though. She had to answer to him for as long as this took, and if she was going to hate him anyway, he might as well give her a reason. "Make your report."

"We arrive on site at—"

"Who and how many is 'we'?"

She shifted her arms, crossing them a little more tightly. "Three. Officer Rho, myself, and Lobelia."

Lobelia…? Oh. Right. The gossipy one who was more or less neutral to his face, but always just loud enough for 9S to hear his snide comments when he spoke to anyone else. Maybe that was why he hadn't seen Aconite around anywhere; they looked like they might have been closer than not.

Add her to the list of things he had to watch out for in this camp. "Go on."

"We arrive on site at 7:34 PM. Rho cites electrical damage, works her way down the block. At 9:14, she completes a survey of ground zero. She isn't satisfied with her results. 9:20, she speaks to a machine about the incident. He reports something being dragged toward the roller coaster plaza by a pod. At 9:33, we arrive at the designated location. Nothing there but more fog. But Rho insists she can see this glow—"

"What kind of glow?"

"How should I know? It was foggy, I didn't see shit."

"Rho's visual capabilities were highly developed," Gamma interjected. "Her cameras had several alternative wavelength capture modes–UV, heat, and the like. There's a high probability she saw something you couldn't have even in ideal conditions."

Cypress snorted. "She sure didn't see that asshole coming."

9S sat forward and propped his chin up on the hilt of Virtuous Contract. "Tell me everything. As much detail as you can."

She leaned back in her seat, her gaze turning inward. "When Rho was following whatever she saw, she climbed the steps to the roller coaster. Lobelia was right in front of me, I was guarding up the rear. They took Lobelia out first. Full cloak, low visibility, just…" Her hand rose and made a clean cutting motion across her neck. "Rho managed to get a shot off. I think it connected because the unit turned their back on me. Ran at her, shoved the sword straight through her, went right through the railing."

"Did you chase them?"

"I leaped down after them, but all that was left was Rho and the sword." Her fingers clenched against the fabric of her cloak. "Rho lived long enough to give me data chip with her findings, but that was about it. Died on site. I rushed to Pascal's village for help."

9S waved that part away. "Irrelevant."

The words caught Cypress off guard. They caught 9S off guard too once he processed what he'd said. He hadn't had much of a reason to interact with other androids in a while, but some of V's mannerisms had soaked in between now and then, and they clearly surfaced when he was annoyed.

"You army androids are pretty knowledgeable about YoRHa," he said, scowling at Gamma. "I don't get how you could have believed this was me."

"Belief wasn't a factor. Your acquisition was the only sensible move to make. Either we had the culprit, or we had someone who would be capable of finding them quickly."

"Good thing Anemone salvaged that plan for you."

"If that's how you want to think of it."

The nerve sensors on his arms and along his shoulders prickled. That was twice now an army officer said something that subtly implied their equals in the Resistance weren't as trustworthy as he believed. Jackass was Jackass; implying she might do something unethical was like saying the sun would shine. As for Anemone, she was keeping secrets on his behalf. The army might have _used_ her, but she had never once done anything he didn't understand nor had she ever been intentionally malicious to him. If there was one person in the entire sector he didn't have to second guess, it was her.

What was the goal of these mind games supposed to be? Gamma was at least as calculated as Theta and 'acquisition' was a pretty specific term to use on someone who had been arrested. He already knew they wanted him for something; did they want it badly enough for this whole thing to be a trap?

Once upon a time, he'd have called that paranoid, and he did his best to channel that version of himself. One who hadn't found out his entire existence was built on a convoluted string of lies. The Army of Humanity, the Resistance, and YoRHa were supposed to be equal forces beneath the Council of Humanity. With that hierarchy shown to be 50% dummy operations that originated from somewhere in the Army, they represented the most powerful android governmental body.

They didn't need to trap him. If they wanted to dismantle him into a series of circuit boards, screws, and silicon scraps, nobody could stop them.

Puzzling over the shifty circumstances he was in would only drive him crazy until he got more data on the army androids. The problem that got him into the headspace for wild conjecture in the first place was this rogue android. He knew it was the unit with V; the timing was too perfect.

The problem was she wasn't behaving like a YoRHa unit.

He tried to ignore that Pine's face was practically inside 11S' chest compartment on the edge of his visual field and leaned toward Cypress. "When she killed Lobelia, how did it happen? Did she throw the sword or was it in hand?"

"She came down over the platform railing, landed on the steps and took Lobelia's head at the same time. I think she—wait, how do you know it was a female model?"

He gestured impatiently at himself. "Only male-type YoRHa with combat routines, remember? What were you about to say, you think she what?"

"I think she had both hands on the hilt."

"Rho turned and shot down from the top of the staircase—and you can't confirm it connected?"

"They didn't make any noise and they didn't flinch. But no bullet marks anywhere in the cement. Figure that one out."

9S tapped at his chin. That was odd, but most likely just a case of demolished pain sensors. If she was handling her maintenance all on her own, she couldn't be in very good condition. "Okay. We assume she takes that shot. She turns her back on you. You don't fire?"

"I'm a high caliber munitions unit," she growled. "At that range, there was a high probability of damaging Rho."

He conceded with a nod. IFF circuits to auto-correct for the presence of allies and prevent targeting of friendly units were a YoRHa function. "Okay, so she runs toward Rho. Pierces through instead of cutting. Two-handed still?"

"Looked like as they were going over."

A cloud passed over the sun and dimmed the few rays peeking through the scaffolding. A dozen simulations of the situation ran through 9S' mind, and not a single one of them made matched the predicted routines of a YoRHa combat-type.

"It doesn't make any sense."

That stirred Gamma out of her statue-like position. "It doesn't?"

"Short sword combat routines have a dozen pre-programmed maneuvers that don't require getting in close enough to get shot even in low visibility conditions. Two-hand use of a one-handed weapon suggests either a unit so damaged they should barely be able to stand up or the kind of programming defect that would have been eliminated well before they made it to the field. And leaving the sword? Any 4O weapon is state of the art YoRHa tech, but the shorter-ranged weapons were just getting to being perfected. Even if her NFCS wasn't fully functional and she was manually engaging, no combat type would just leave that behind. They're to our weaponry what I was to our scanners."

"Real humble of you." Jackass slammed 11S' chest panel closed hard enough to make 9S jolt. "So they're not YoRHa, is what you're saying."

"Will you be careful with him?! I'm saying if she is YoRHa, she isn't operating like one. It was way too sloppy. I'd even call it underkill."

Cypress jumped to her feet. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?!"

"Exactly what I said." He gifted her the same shitty, faux-polite smile she'd been flashing him earlier. She would have killed him with her bare hands if she thought she could get away with it and she deserved a lot more from him than a little rudeness. "They left you and a powerful, almost unique weapon behind. It doesn't add up."

"Agreed," said Pine, though she didn't look up from where she was tightening a connector. "There's a lot to suggest they knew what they were doing, but an almost equal amount to suggest they're a drooling idiot, which leaves me with the impression they did have a goal, just not one we get."

"Rho," 9S thought aloud. "Whether they were YoRHa or not, whatever Rho spotted up there, they didn't want her to get it."

"And there's the drooling idiot part. Because now naturally as a part of this investigation, you're going to go look, right?"

He gave a distracted mumble of something affirmative. V wouldn't have been anywhere near the platform at that hour, and even if he had, Pod 042 would have alerted him. What the heck could have been there that would appear on a non-standard wavelength and was worth killing someone over?

_Oh._ His black box stuttered. _Oh **no.**_

"Something wrong, Unit 9S?"

He looked blankly at Gamma, and carefully closed his slackened mouth. "No. Just…thinking."

She didn't look convinced, but any further questioning was interrupted by a discordant, feedback-laced shriek. 11S convulsed atop the repair cot, his back forming an almost perfect bow. His pale silicone teeth were bared to the sunlight as his speakers screamed endlessly.

9S bolted from his seat and shoulder-checked Jackass out of the way to slap the nearest switch back into the off position. 11S slumped, instantly just as silent and lifeless as he was before.

"Pod!"

"NO CHANGE IN STATUS OF 11S. HOWEVER, FURTHER TAMPERING WITHOUT FULL REPAIR IS NOT RECOMMENDED."

9S pressed both hands to 11S' face and leaned down to put an ear to his chest plate. There was a faint buzz like a strong current moving through a filament, but nothing else. He spun on Jackass. "What the hell did you do?!"

"I didn't do shit!" she snapped back at him. "It was a basic reformatting attempt, and I disabled his goddamn pain sensors so I don't know what the fuck that was!"

"He's not some lost pod for you to tear apart and put back together however you'd like!"

"You could easily give me other options if he's so important to you." She held out her arms and made a show of cocking her ear toward him. "I don't hear you volunteering. Maybe shout if you're gonna talk to me from up on your fucking high horse."

"I'm not on a high horse, _Jackass_, but it must look that way from down in all those graves you keep robbing."

Gamma stepped between them without a word. Her sheer mass was a deterrent all by itself, and though they continued to exchange glares, they let it drop.

"_9S!_" They all looked up to see Freesia waving and pointing from the scaffolding. "It's another one—come quick before they shoot him!"

9S spared only a fraction of a second to glance at the faces around him. He found no information in any of them. Nor did he see anything but pure confusion and wariness in the androids gathered above, bunched up around the bend where the locked gate to the supply room was. He vaulted up the ladder and elbowed his way through the crowd.

Below, Bouvardia held a staying hand to a ring of resistance members prepared to fire. On the other side of him, with his back pressed to the barrier and a large branch held in his quaking grasp, was another scanner.

The sun re-emerged and 9S recognized him instantly.

Even though his hair had grown long and bedraggled. Even though he was missing an arm and the paneling around his knees was showing. Even though the moment he tried to move, he spilled to the ground and did not have the control to do anything but land face first and send his only weapon spinning out of his reach.

He could barely extend his arm out and his voice was a dust-choked sob. "Give him back…! 11S… Don't h-hurt him…!"

9S sprang over the rails, skidded down to the android's side, and lifted him from the dirt. He felt like a case full of broken twigs. 9S snatched his blindfold and checked his eyes just to be sure. Gray blue. Uninfected. Just bleary as they tried to focus on him.

"…9S?" His voice and eyes grew brighter with recognition. With relief. "9S…!"

"Yeah." He wiped cold, cracked mud from the other scanner's face. "It's me, 4S. Everything's gonna be okay."


	52. Compassion and Conviction

In the eight long months since the tower fell, the times when V was not at or close to the front of 9S' mind could be counted on one hand. Even when 9S left him, the materials or the data he gathered was for his sake. When there was nothing he could do, he thought of ways he could help him and learn more about him in the future. His existence had come to revolve around V's just as he first expected, hoped, and feared it would.

72 hours undid it all.

It should have jarred him. The sole human on earth, reduced to less than an afterthought, and if his base imperatives pumped out any guilt or anxiety or any emotion at all in response he couldn't feel it. There was only a slow and painful grind in his chest. The first words out of his mouth to 4S had been assurance that everything would be okay, and 9S hadn't found a way yet that could make up for saying something so careless.

Finding 4S alive before the Tower fell had been a surprise, but a dull one. It hadn't mattered. Knowing 4S was alive now and having him so close was like being awakened from a bad dream and finding the comfort of a familiar room. All while the older scanner underwent basic repairs, 9S felt like a giddy carousel had replaced his black . Every weary but relieved smile from 4S made it spin. He wasn't alone. There were others like him.

Unfortunately, reality was more than the fact that 4S was alive and they were together.

Reality was that 11S had not merely suspended himself. He had been infected with the logic virus and chosen to lock his personal data—a process 9S himself had once declined in the throes of the virus. It had all the memory-erasing properties of suspension without any of the self-preservation functionality. Ideally, this should have allowed him to be rebooted at some other time in his default state, but catastrophic damage to his body had interrupted the process.

An emergency suspension right in the middle of a data lock could have severed the link between his consciousness and his personal data. There was no telling what state the two were in now. If he was reformatted without addressing the problem, it might kill him in the worst case or completely erase everything, including his default data, in the best case. There would be no booting him back up.

Reality was that 4S' hacking capabilities were fried on a hardware-deep level, and he was useless to Jackass. When he found out why Jackass had taken 11S and what she had done and would continue to do despite his explanations and warnings, he'd snapped. At her, at the camp... And at 9S.

"How are they doing?"

9S startled and nearly knocked over the mobile privacy curtain he'd been leaning against. Despite the clear aural record of footsteps, he hadn't processed that they were approaching him. It was the army android with the weirdly long braid.

"You're… the repairs officer, right? You tell me."

"That was a rhetorical question used as extension of courtesy." Her head dropped to curious tilt. "I think you know that, so I'll just go ahead and assume that you're still rattled by the simultaneous discovery that you weren't the only S-model to survive and the other two are in extremely poor condition."

She wasn't smiling. Not even a hint of inappropriate cheer, or any disapproval for that matter. Unlike Theta, who always looked like she was thinking about dissecting something, and Gamma who was stone-faced or vaguely scowling, this one seemed normal. At the bare minimum, she was the only one who had tried to make pleasant conversation with him so far.

"…Sorry."

She shrugged it off. "Have you read the report?"

"In full." Including a name he hadn't placed at the time. "I suppose that makes you Iota?"

"Among other things." She did smile then, in a methodical sort of way. Like she practiced and had the technical movements down but was still experimenting with the rest. "My original question was also more about psychological status rather than physical. 4S has been informative regarding 11S' condition, but he's not open about much else."

"Would you be? Jackass pretty much kidnapped the only person he had left." He rubbed at his eyes. "And I let her do whatever she wanted to him, so he's not talking to me either."

"I'm not sure you could have stopped her. I hear she does all kinds of unethical things to her fellow androids." Her voice dropped conspiratorially. "Without their permission."

If that was another attempt to make Jackass seem untrustworthy, it was the worst one yet. Iota had the same glint in her eye as an Operator who had caught wind of some interesting new piece of human data. Was she really just gossiping with him? That was somehow stranger than the behavior of her comrades. Less stressful, definitely, but way weirder.

"She asked me to help her," he said slowly. "If I'd said yes, none of this would've happened."

"Correct. You'd have no idea they were alive and they'd still be run down in a highly hostile zone." She flicked her braid around her neck like a scarf. "There's still plenty of time to say yes."

Though she was the least threatening of the army androids so far, he couldn't trust how easily she made the suggestion. It was too matter of fact, and even worse, it was correct. Jackass wouldn't stop until she found a way to hack in to the copied network. 4S could scream and cry until his black exploded, it wouldn't change her mind. All this fretting was just to avoid the binary nature of the problem's outcomes. Someone was going to do what Jackass wanted, whether it was him or 11S.

Thinking of what he might find in there, 9S couldn't help but shudder.

Iota picked up on it. "If you're scared, you could always take a lesson from 4S. It must've taken a lot of bravery to come here with nothing but a stick he could barely hold."

He stared at her, unable to decide if the gulf between them came from differences in experience or the differences in their hardware. It couldn't really be that hard to understand that courage had nothing to do with why 4S dragged himself after 11S in his condition. He knew he could have died. He just didn't care.

9S knew very well there wasn't a single brave thing about it.

"Can you just leave us alone for a while?"

Iota dragged the wheeled curtain and between them and trotted off without another word. 11S had been given a proper cot, though he was still hooked up to four different monitors. 4S was curled up next to him.

9S pulled a third cot close, but not too close, and sat.

4S had been with 11S when it all went wrong. He had helped hack the machine that passed the infection on and had been the one to dig 11S out after a major structural collapse interrupted his lock process and caused a portion of the damage he still had. To try and preserve both his memories and his body, he'd heavily modified 11S and even gave some of his own parts trying to repair him. The significantly less damaged left arm 11S had, 4S had severed from himself.

The risk of such close, extended interaction with an infected unit was high and eventually caught up with him. He struggled for days to keep his system clear, fighting a battle of entropy against an infection that always came back faster and far more aggressive. Had the tower not fallen and taken N2 and the logic virus with it, he would have died. He very nearly did anyway when the tower collapsed onto the castle.

November was nearly over before he rebooted in the ravine with his hacking functions destroyed and his motor processors shot. He and 11S had been spared from a watery burial at the bottom of the river by the remains of the Meat Box. Getting both of them back to the surface was a cold, grueling war against 4S' failing systems and the weight of 11S' body that was often fought just a few meters at a time. That had been his life until February. On an obscured crag by one of the numerous streams, where their only company was the occasional boar, 4S had completed his climb and enjoyed a much-deserved rest. When he awoke, he'd cautiously begun scoping the area—searching for places he might be able to find parts because if he couldn't hack, the ability to run away was vital.

9S could not imagine what he must have felt upon returning to the crag to find 11S gone and two pairs of boot tracks in the mud. To cross the sector and find his allies intent on doing something that might kill taken the very person he'd worked so hard to save…

Who could blame him for being livid?

9S knew he couldn't make 4S accept or understand the situation. Not if he sat down and explained every awful detail of what was going on. With 11S at stake, 4S wouldn't hear him anymore that he had heard A2 at the top of the Tower.

It made 9S' chest tighten, but there was only one thing to do.

"I'll go," he said softly. "I know what Jackass is hoping to get out of the network copy, I'll go in and find it."

4S' pushed himself upright on shuddering limbs. He still wore the visor, so 9S couldn't tell how he was being looked at. "Why? What's so different? You feeling guilty now?"

"No. I mean, I am, but that's not—"He frowned, and clenched at hem of his shorts. "4S, I wasn't happy with what Jackass was doing either. I expected her to find parts for what she needed, not a whole scanner and definitely not one in the state 11S is in."

"Oh, well _that_ makes it better," he snarled. "She could've killed him!"

"She was trying not to." He hesitated and held 2B's sword a little closer. "She asked me. Whether she should, I mean."

4S head snapped up, but words were slow to follow. "And you told her no."

9S shrugged weakly. "I didn't think I could live with saying yes. Even though he's…like that."

"I guess I should thank you for that, at least." There was a slight shiver of 4S' shoulders, and his palm clenched atop the yellow foam. "Damn it, 9S… You're the best one for a mission like this, why wouldn't you just do it?"

"I was scared of what I'd find." He still was.

"When has that ever mattered? We're soldiers!"

"The war is over, 4S. A peace treaty between the Army of Humanity and the peaceful machines was signed right here in the resistance camp. In January. Jackass isn't doing this for victory. It's for answers."

"I don't understand. Answers to what?"

"To the question of who created YoRHa."

"…The Council of Humanity created YoRHa."

"No..." 9S' reflection in Virtuous Contact stared back at him. "YoRHa created the Council of Humanity."

"…_What?"_ The single syllable broke into two equally confused halves on his lips.

9S knew that tone well, and how it turned the word into less of a question and more of a horrified denial. He'd sounded like that too, as he kept finding lie after lie. Just as he'd sounded so certain that there must have been a mistake when the Commander confronted him.

"Humans are extinct," he said slowly. "They died out before the aliens even arrived. Project YoRHa was a plan to propagate a lie that humans still existed. To give android kind something to fight for. Creating the Council of Humanity was phase 1. We were phase 2."

4S' head swiveled between 11S and 9S, and he clutched the former's limp hand. "It's over now," he croaked, more to himself than 9S. "It doesn't matter. The war's over and… all I have to do is worry about 11S."

9S nodded and kept quiet. He didn't trust himself not to say something that would give away how much he envied 4S in that moment.

The rest could come another day. One piece at a time. If 4S knew about the humans, no one could spring the report on him. They could get into the nature of the black box and the final phase of Project YoRHa later.

"Don't tell him."

9S frowned, and pity must have filled his eyes, because 4S sat straight and raised his head.

"Don't look at me like that. I kept him from dying, I got us both out of the ravine alive, and I'm going to fix him. Somehow. Whether it takes me months or years." His speech was strong and certain, and even more than his ability to cling to 11S in the face of the truth, 9S envied the conviction in his words. 4S refused to be pitiful even in the middle of pitiful circumstances. "So when he wakes up… Don't you dare tell him."

"…I won't." The command lifted a small weight off of 9S that he felt no guilt in letting it go of. Once was bad enough; he didn't want to ever have to do this again. He'd have grasped the other scanner's hand as a gesture of his seriousness, but he was certain 4S wasn't going to let go of 11S for a while. He slid down from the cot. "I should go tell Jackass."

"Wait." 4S voice was quiet but steady. His mouth hung open, struggling to process thoughts 9S could only guess at with the visor between them. "It was silly to think it was all going to be easy. You must have... also been dealing with a lot."

9S' body filled with a ticklish shade of the warmth he had come to associate with Anthurium. He was a 'younger' unit than either of them, and it was nice to be acknowledged, but he had a hazy understanding that he wasn't their junior anymore. He _had _dealt with a lot since the two of them last met, and he was the only one who had any idea of what was ahead of them. Irresponsible promises like 'everything will be alright' were no longer acceptable even if the sentiment was genuine.

Whether 4S came to hate 9S for it or not, they all shared the same fate. The three scanners were in a camp full of androids that were going to hate or fear or pity them, and 4S would have no idea why because his isolation had spared him the truth about YoRHa's purpose and the composition of their bodies.

If 9S didn't protect them, no one else would.

"Listen, 4S." He joined the other scanner on his cot, flicking his eyes around for any sign of nearby army androids. Gamma was out leading a team to investigate the amusement park, but she wasn't the only one who might be listening to a conversation between scanners. He dropped his voice to a whisper. "You know the Army of Humanity is here, right?"

4S nodded slowly. "The silver uniforms."

"Be careful around them."

4S' stare couldn't be hidden by something as simple as a blindfold. His voice lowered. "Is this about the murder?"

"No. It's been going on since before then. Their commander is interested in my data. She hasn't been interested in 11S, but she might want yours too, and I don't know what for. Gamma is an enforcer, their information officer was killed, and you probably know more about Iota than I do, but she seems easiest to talk to so far, so I'm going to try and get some answers out of her. But keep your head down, okay?"

"Not like I have much choice." 4S laughed at himself, but it quickly faded. His hand was still latched onto 11S limp fingers. "…I'm sorry, 9S. I wish I could help."

"Don't apologize," he said gently. "I don't deserve that."

"Yes, you do," he countered firmly. "If there's anything I can do…"

"Just rest, 4S." He let the little joy of reconciliation warm his expression, and hoped it prevented 4S from noticing how tight his grip on Virtuous Contract was." I'll take care of everything."

* * *

The hacking space... The machine network—is white.

9S stands atop a high pillar, gazes down on the infinite maze of it, and it suddenly occurs to him that it is also disorganized. Beepy's network spread in a recursive pattern, always shaped like itself whether he was on the fringes or at the core. The machine network has no such pattern. It sprawls without rhyme or reason, tightly packed here and spacious there, towering in one place and sunken in another directly beside. It's far larger, but somehow it is empty.

There is no song to fill the void.

9S rubs away a chill that has nothing to do with temperature. The silence of cyberspace has never bothered him before. There is no reason for it to bother him now, or so he tells himself. This is a short, experimental assessment and he has only five minutes until Jackass pulls him out. The best thing he can do is determine where he is, where he should go, and how he will get there.

A pillar of light rises into the endless gray-beige sky. Packets of data rain down around it, dying like sparks from a firework before they ever fall to the horizon. Hacking time is compact compared to real-time, but even an elongated five minutes will not be enough for him to get there. However, it is more than enough for him to calculate his distance from it and use that data to establish entry coordinates. They are unlikely to be correct, but each successive entry should improve the quality of the algorithm through manual error correction.

_9S. _

The shape of the whisper passing through his aural reading matches the passing of the resulting chill that travels his spine. There is no further sound save the artificial bio-feedback coming from his projected shape. Outside of him, there are no signs of life or activity to be found.

He rubs once more at his rigid shoulders as he searches to no avail for a source. The network can only exist by linking one machine consciousness to another over and over to the billionth degree, yet it is empty. There are no defensive barriers or pathways to discrete individual data. There is nothing. No one.

Only the air whispering his name.

_9S. 9S. 9S. _

A sword comes to his hand. It is a low-resolution projection of a sword that bears no resemblance to Cruel Oath, but in this space it is every bit as real as it needs to be.

He calls into the empty space. "Hello…?"

The whispers gather and a shape begins to coalesce. It is only a copy, but his teeth grind and grate and his grip on the sword tightens. A pressure warning appears in his UI. The flashes of red are lost in the shape of the red dress materializing before him.

"**_You."_**


	53. The Devil in the Machine

**A/N: There will be no update this weekend due to the holiday. I'll see y'all next Wednesday.**

* * *

N2 hovers delicately above the ground and dips into an elegant curtsy. "Welcome to the—"

The sword glides through her without intent or rational thought from 9S. It is almost a surprise when he finds himself surrounded by the white packets she scatters into, albeit a satisfying surprise. 9S knows he cannot kill the meta-network, but a sub-routine of a sub-routine sends the sizzle of murderous impulse through his limbs, and he does not bother to control it. Even if this is a backup, he is still inside the machine network. Fatal damage is possible, and if N2 is there, viral infection is a valid concern and a strong reason to keep her away from him.

N2 does not attack. Her scattered data reconnects passively while she speaks. "We do not need to fight. Killing one another for humanity's ashes, suffering to evolve past the need for purpose… That is over, Unit 9S."

9S does not lower his sword. "Why the hell would I believe that."

"Have I ever lied to you?"

The question is strange. N2 has never needed to lie. Why bother? The truths of this world are the most damning things possible, and she has damned him personally at every opportunity. "Just because you don't lie doesn't mean you're trustworthy. You built a cannon. You were going to destroy the moon server."

"Yes, we were." Dainty crimson shoes emerge and touch down on the white platform. The rest of N2's human shape follows in alternating shades of black and red. "Maybe androids believed the lie YoRHa was made in service of. Maybe they did not. Either way, we would have destroyed their hopes and robbed them of purpose. But it occurred to us at the end what a pointless thing it would be. We thought it better to take all that we were and all that we'd learned and leave for another world. We did build a cannon, 9S, but it was to fire our ark."

An ark. The sword lowers as 9S considers the new information. That was their solution. An…ark.

He remembers the girls' taunts in the tower, how they believed that they were closer to humanity than any android. Yet here N2 is, unknowingly following in the footsteps of a being that began its life as a mere robot. 9S has met this robot. He knows its story and the name of the soul that caused its ascendance. He knows the song its network sings. N2 is only a pretender, and a poor one at that. Beepy is a god far kinder and far more human than she could ever be.

"This… isn't an Ark." The coils of an emotion he does not know spring loose. They tickle him from the inside out and weave triumphant laughter between his words. "You played with all our lives in the hope of evolving and this is where it got you. Trapped on a chunk of memory alloy lying in the dirt. Your tower is just a bunch of rocks now. You'll never leave Earth!"

N2's face is as much a mask as Emil's frozen grin. Her lips do not move, nor do her eyes, and if she feels anything at all, 9S cannot tell. "It matters little. We have infinite time to correct that."

"I doubt it. Jackass is probably going to rig this thing with every explosive she can make once I'm finished here." His laughter grows sharp. There are new and strange fangs to his voice and he finds himself glad to bare them. "I'm so glad I lived. I'm glad I'm here to see you learn what it means to lose something precious to you."

"We understand the experience well. We watched it happen a thousand times before you were ever made."

"You caused it a thousand times before I was ever made. And now you get to rot in this hoard of all the misery you caused."

"It was necessary for machines to evolve." She sounds impatient with him. Like he is a child that doesn't understand some simple principle. "Even if you shatter the alloy, you will only split us into smaller pieces. Whether we are large or small, we will have eternity. You cannot kill us, 9S."

"Then where's the other one of you?"

N2 quiets. Her face flickers. Exchanging one mask for another, a frozen grimace of irritation replaces her neutral expression.

His laughter is explosive this time. Warm, cruel pleasure overflows him, bubbling up like black tar to the surface of the desert. For the first time, he understands that look V gets in his eyes when he destroys a machine that has managed to annoy him. The feeling of knowing an enemy is suffering is one 9S thinks he could fall in love with.

"Amazing, you killed your other half too! Maybe there really isn't anything that's precious to you."

Her face flickers again. This time she wears a mask with a pensive frown on it. "You were."

"That's a terrible joke."

"Your existence was the most fascinating of everything we ever observed. The pressure you endured with every life you lived was extraordinary, and even though they erased you time and time again, you continued to evolve little by little. We were very curious what would happen when you finally got to the truth with no one to take your memories away. But all you did was focus on 2B..."

She speaks of the past with a complicated expression and a wistful voice. Like the torment she made him endure has little or nothing to do with her, or maybe like it does but she thinks of it as something nostalgic.

It would confuse him if it did not leave him so full of acid.

"You died. That's what happened. And I only wish I was the one to do it."

"And yet here I am." Her expression flickers again, this time to a frustrated pout. The girlishness of it clashes with the voice of the older male she speaks with. 9S notes for the first time that it is a deeper, louder version of the same voice that used to deliver the council broadcasts. It is another thing she is imitating; another little mockery. "We were going to take you in with us. No pain or suffering or war, just the light of the stars, forever. We wanted to see how interesting you might be then."

"You're just as responsible for 2B's death as A2." He raises the sword until the point is centimeters from her forehead. On the other side of it, his eyes are clear and blue and bright with his enduring hatred. "I was never going to go with you."

N2's face flickers, but 9S doesn't catch the mask she puts on before she vanishes. "Then chase her ghost as you always do, YoRHa Unit 9S."

It takes several moments of silence before he accepts he's truly alone. A file arrives in his databanks, but he hesitates to access it right there and then. Jackass should be pulling him out soon. It will be safer to open it once he's back in physical space.

N2's words bother him. Her tone bothers him. He believes that his suffering was interesting to her, but he cannot make the connection from that to the implication that he is somehow personally important to her.

For the remaining Red Girl to sound jealous is far more than he can process.

_9S…_

He whirls, ready to cut her down again.

The platform is empty, but he is not alone. On a lower level, a lone figure clad in black observes him. Her short white hair and visor obscure her face, but there is no world in which 9S would not recognize her.

Her name does not escape his lips before the disconnect signal comes in from the outside.

* * *

Snow tickled 9S' cheek. Memories of awakening in the pit with Beepy rushed to the front of his mind, and a frantic gasp accompanied his reconnection to his physical body. The ceiling and the walls around him were white, but not in the flat, uniform way hacking space was.

"9S?" The voice was only barely familiar to him. Her tanned face and dark hair reminded him of Anemone, but her eyes weren't weary or warm enough. And their color was off—dark brown, not green. Who was she? "Good, keep your eyes on me, scanner-man. How bad is the disorientation?"

Hackerman? Right, that was… Her name was Iota. She was the army's ground repairs officer. He'd grabbed her when he went to talk to Jackass about…the network.

They were in the crater. White debris piled high around them and the memory alloy sat in the dirt that had been yielding mud during the fall rains and had since frozen into a hard cradle of earth beneath it. Fat clumps of snow flurried weightlessly through the sky and packed the air like downy feathers. He was lying on a slab of the debris. After so much time left to absorb heat, it gave off subtle warmth that permeated his back plating.

He flexed his fingers and toes and shifted. Everything responded to his commands. When he sat up, he immediately lurched forward and had to catch his head in his hand. "Ugh… my ears are ringing."

Iota made a note of the side effect on her own UI screen. She repeated, a little more insistently. "Disorientation?"

"It's clearing up already," said 9S.

"Black box temperature a little high but acceptable; minimal signs of hyper- or hypo-processing…" Iota reached out to the pod sitting on top of Jackass' truck and got a hefty slap on the back of her hand. "Ow! What the hell!?"

"It's a delicate piece of equipment," said Jackass.

"It didn't look delicate when you threw it in the truck earlier, and we both know I'm capable of turning a single dial without your assistance, so I'm thinking you just slapped my hand because you wanted to."

"Can one of you please just turn the frequency down," 9S groaned. Jackass obliged, and the keening in his ears went away. "Thank you… Why did have even have it turned up like that?"

"I was having some trouble pulling you out." She crossed her arms and gave an expectant grin. "By which I mean you were resisting. So, you found something right?"

Sourness churned in his stomach as his memories re-asserted themselves into sensible chronological order. "I saw N2."

Jackass and Iota both flinched back, only to gather in close to hear his report. He gave them the sterile version: triangulation algorithms, visual descriptors of his surroundings, the unexpected lack of defensive barriers or any signs of activity. The version of the conversation with N2 they got with was only about the Ark and that N2 was singular now. It had killed its other self or absorbed it—he didn't know.

He didn't mention seeing 2B at all.

"I did get a data packet during the exchange." He found it within his memory and prepared it for transfer, but not without taking hold of Virtuous Contract and drawing himself up to his full height atop the white stone. "That's proof right? You'll hold up your end of the deal?"

Jackass unfurled her arms and set her hands on her hips. "Can't do anything for the scanning hardware and a new arm'll be off-model assuming I can find one that fits his body at all. Repairing his sub-processors, restoring full motor control, and taking care of the rest of the laundry list for 4S is fine. Favor for a favor."

"And 11S?"

"If you want him alive, you don't want me to try and fix him."

"Yeah, I do. You're also the smartest resistance android I know. The Army of Humanity has some kind of YoRHa design document or they've studied us or something. I don't know. I don't care. But Iota can probably bridge the gap in your knowledge. She clearly knows her way around our bodies and our capabilities."

"To the last diode," Iota agreed, twirling her braid up under 9S' nose. "But that was an assumption of my assistance you just made. You might be a free agent, but the Army of Humanity is still a part of the Human Heritage Restoration & Management Organization. Just because the war is over doesn't mean I can disregard my commands."

"Did Theta or the HHRMO command you to not repair 11S? Because from what I've noticed, she seems keen on having a hacking-capable scanner on hand. I'm sure she'd love two."

Iota gave him a blank, placid look, but in the same way she struggled to smile naturally, she wasn't quite as good at putting on a mask as Gamma or Theta. She had to be aware of it because she cracked pretty much instantly.

"It's not like that, really! She doesn't want your hacker parts." She squinted at Jackass. "Not like butcher-shop over here."

Jackass made a rude gesture. Iota made a juvenile one back. 9S ignored them both. So, Theta wasn't interested in him just because he was a functional scanner… Good to know. "Just do his physical repairs to the best of your ability. And **listen to 4S**. He knows what modifications he made. 11S' condition is complicated. I want to save his memories if I can, but I understand that might not be realistic."

"Fixing him in the first place is already kind of unrealistic." Iota sighed far too loudly and tossed her braid over her shoulder. "But I'll request authorization when we're back in the camp… Hope you've got deep pockets; even if I'm cleared do this it's not going to be cheap."

"That's fine. Whatever I need to do, I will."

"We all good then?" Jackass kept a cool voice, but she was looking at him like she was going to cut him open and dig the file out herself if she kept him waiting any longer.

He transferred the data and sat back down on the slab to think about the things he hadn't told them.

2B's appearance inside the network might have only been a trick played by N2. It wouldn't have been the first time. But the way she talked, it sounded like she didn't want 2B there. Like she was mad at her for getting in the way of…whatever N2 thought was going to happen. So why…?

"What the fuck…"

He rolled his head back. Jackass was squinting at a small tablet as the data scrolled by too rapidly for him to see. "Something wrong?"

She flapped her hand to shush him and gnawed at her glove for well over ten minutes, all of which were increasingly hard on 9S' ability to control his curiosity. Eventually, she whipped around and wiggled the tablet just above his head.

"You know what this is?"

"Uh… No? I didn't look at it."

"It's a basis of design document. For the resource recovery units." There was a tremor to her voice, too breathless to be anger and too low to be excitement. "You're going to want to read it."

He sat up and opened a screen to review the data. His lips moved as his finger scrolled slowly up one side. Midway through, his breath faltered.

He read the rest without a single motion other than the harried flicks of his index finger.

The resource units were designed to cause him stress (and knowing that truth existed in black and white text for all to read made N2's talk of fascination with him all the more revolting). But their actual purpose was a separate matter. The disturbing words over their entrances, written in a language his sensors did not recognize, were very literal.

Meat. Soul. God.

Each was a resource that N2 wanted, and she set them up so that 9S would do the reaping for her. The meat was simple. 9S destroyed wave after wave of machines and their broken bodies became parts for N2. He flicked through the brief section to get to the box that worried him most.

The Soul Box.

If androids or machines had individual souls, memory data where it lived. That was the conclusion N2 came to, and it colored everything that happened to him inside the Soul Box in fresh, unsettling ways.

The Soul Box was the one he always kept further from his mind precisely because he felt so little at the time. Impatience, mostly, as N2 congratulated and rewarded him for things that made less and less sense and eventually became contradictory. Rewards for helping androids. Rewards for recovering android bodies. Rewards for helping machines. Rewards for hacking machines. Rewards for killing machines. She had given him a sword for the last of those, and all he could think at the time was that it would serve her right if he killed her with it.

It was where N2 gave him the truth about the black box, but more importantly, it was where she threw him at the uglier side of his feelings for 2B. The ones he had ignored for as long as he had suspected 2B's purpose. Because they were the exact kind of emotion that was prohibited and because he didn't want to be the kind of person who could feel that way about someone he cared for. Within his own memory region, he had to watch a facsimile of her act out his fears and take the things he couldn't forgive her taking from him. He couldn't hate 2B. He _still_ didn't hate her. But he cherished the memories of his time with her. They were his only possessions in all the world. His treasures. There was no way he wouldn't harbor resentment for the one who took them. There was no way he wouldn't kill to defend them.

Even if the person stealing them from him was 2B herself.

He knew what he destroyed at the top of that tower wasn't 2B. It was just a machine core, and he still had all the memories that seemed to have been stripped from his memory region. It may have all been a trick—a convincing but wholly external delusion designed to stress him. But he had to have given N2 a soul. That was what the tower was meant to do.

And he couldn't shake the feeling that the soul he had provided for N2 been his own.

That left the God Box.

Just like the other boxes, it was designed to take from others based on a parameter. In this case, N2 had found a single guiding phrase and determined it to be sufficient.

**'The object of your love is your god.'**

Machines might have seen humans as gods, but actual love for humanity was the domain of androids. A machine's love was for its treasure. A YoRHa's love was also for its treasure, suppressed as it might've been.

21O was the only thing at the top of the God Box. So desperately alone that she'd transitioned to a B-model just to be closer to him. Family had been her treasure. He had been her treasure. The way she'd arranged it, either 21O would kill her god, or 9S would lose the single thing in the whole world that could have kept him out of the tower. Either way, N2 would secure the thing that fascinated her most.

Meat. Soul. God. _N2's_ meat, soul, and god.

Whether it was supposed to be an ark or a cannon didn't matter. The product was a body and identity built by force because otherwise, for all her ability to puppet other beings, N2 was still just an immaterial entity bound by and to the network. She could destroy the world if she wanted, but she could never touch it. In order to change that, she stole from every source she could.

Including from YoRHa.

Jackass was looking at him with wide, bright eyes. Waiting. She must have come to the same conclusion. As he closed the readout, he suspected he would find out quickly just how right or wrong they were. His legs swung up, and his head moved back down to rest on the tower block.

"Send me back in."

Jackass didn't bat a lash. "How long this time?"

"I'll come out when I find what I need."

The muted shadow of Iota's braid shook vigorously on the ceiling. Beside him, Jackass rolled her eyes and twisted a dial on the fragmented pod. "Don't be a hero, asshole. Fifteen minutes."


	54. The Tower and the Moon

The machine network is white, empty, and silent—and 9S now understands how that could be.

N2 can control the machines, but she is not them. To think she has any idea what any of each of the innumerable minds might want is like 9S imagining he understands the thoughts of the nanomachines marching omnipresent but invisible over his body. Just like the freshly manufactured machines that occupy the city, the machines within the copied network are new to a life that doesn't involve the imitation of humanity.

They are thinking.

9S wonders what will happen when the first one raises its voice. Will there be harmony because they are all connected or will they struggle against the choice N2 has made for them all?

Machines evolve rapidly, and 9S feels a sense of urgency that was not present before. Because of N2's indiscriminate cannibalizing, YoRHa data exists somewhere in the sprawl that surrounds him. Two hundred among what had to be billions of machines. He is resigned to the idea that he will not find all of them.

The one he most wants to see is right where he left her.

So many minuscule details of 2B are written into his memory that he knows instantly that something isn't right. Her uniform is different, less sleek and more adorned. Her frown is different. The similar cut of her hair is not exactly identical. Though she doesn't move, even her posture is off. Is she an older 2B model? A No.2 of a different type rolled out for the final all-out attack?

"Who are you…?"

She doesn't acknowledge him. It is the worst sign of all.

Trinary organization of mental processes is a YoRHa-only feature. Neither machines nor standard androids compartmentalize their being into separate spheres of consciousness data, personality data, and memory data. What happens, what is interpreted, and what emotional response arises are parallel but separate wires. The physical space between the regions could only be measured in words that began with micro- and nano- but that minor gap is the difference between a static or dynamic existence.

It is clear to 9S that whoever this is, they are missing one or more of these data sets. He hopes that she is only an outlier—that other YoRHa androids caught in the network are intact. For now, he is curious who this antiquated look-alike is.

As he comes within arm's reach of her, she reacts. Her head drops and 9S feels her eyes meet his through her visor. Polygons all over her body flicker and alter their shape and color. When they are done, a cold gaze and unkempt white hair top a unit so poorly maintained that her grime-coated panels rise stark against underlying muscular wiring. Only a thin scrap of leather clings to her midriff and sags sadly around her hips.

9S' breathes an irate sigh. He should have known. "Can't get away from you no matter what I do, huh?"

A2 doesn't respond. She is not fully static, but she is far from dynamic. It doesn't surprise 9S. She took the virus from him after he had already begun to merge into the network. However, the time between the transfer and the destruction off the real network could not have been more than a few minutes. There would not have been enough time or a deep enough viral progression for N2 to acquire more than fragments of her.

9S wonders what she could have been thinking during the tower collapse to result in her standing around in her old uniform. He thinks briefly of asking Anemone but decides better of it. She's already buried A2 and a visual quirk isn't important enough to make her dig up those memories.

He is much more interested in why A2 reacted, at least visually, to his proximity. Interactions with other androids while already inside a network aren't foreign to him. He knows it is just a matter of interfacing, but he can't help a surge of heat in his chest as he closes the distance between them.

She really did have the same face.

The moment he makes contact, A2 gasps. The grandiose network spreads around them. Local resolution increases and the path widens and magnifies. But it isn't her data that springs up around them. It's his. He recognizes the disjointed memories of 4S and the half-processed remnants of fire and bloodied salt and a shack filled with oranges. Somehow they have arrived at the core of his personality data. The white shape of it is just as cracked and feeble as the last time he saw it, but now it is also shuddering. A corresponding pain answers from within his chest. Packets of data stream out and spread into memories that aren't his.

All around are images recorded through A2's eyes. His battered and infected self rests just outside the ray of light that connects the network and all the machines on it. She strokes his cheek with gentleness that doesn't suit her callous nature and draws the virus from him into herself despite Pod 042's warnings. Again he hears A2's voice promising to take care of things, the same as when he conducted his first major repair after discovering V. 9S has taken pains to not think about it or what Pod 153 said even once since then. There is no part of him that wants to consider that some part of her might have merged with him in all that chaos.

But that is precisely what happened, and he can no longer avoid it.

Other memories spring up around them. He sees himself and 2B together in times and places he doesn't know. A part of him lights up. It is new data of time spent with her, even though he knows already how it will end—with A2 stepping unconcerned over their fallen bodies. This version of him is not the first to meet her, nor was his 2B the first one to be cut down by her.

The ache in his chest intensifies, and A2 is there to catch him when wobbles. Her expression is dreamy and unfocused but painfully tender.

"Don't," he pushes through clenched teeth. "Don't… look at me the way she did…"

There is a shift in his chest. A2 presses her hand against it and 9S' first wild thought is that she will somehow materialize his black box against his will. But she takes something else. It squirms toward her from inside of him the way worms seek the surface when it rains.

A stream of data moves between them like lunar tear pollen floating on the wind. It would be beautiful if it did not feel like A2 was pulling a length of barbed wire through his entire being. There is no room for him to scream or breathe or beg her to stop; he can only collapse paralyzed into her arms and grit his teeth. Beyond the ragged lengths of her hair, his personality core utters a deathly rattle.

Then it's over.

Though he doesn't need it, he takes a greedy breath. It helps him mitigate the lingering shards of the pain and yank himself back from her touch. His personality core is still and quiet. It looks different. It looks… better.

"9S…?"

A2's low croak startles him. Her resting expression is no longer a distant blank. There is recognition there. Whatever piece of her data she has detangled from him has shifted her closer to being properly dynamic.

"Don't talk to me," he says in a flat, dismissive voice. "You're dead. Just a data impression left behind in the network."

She gives him a confused look. Her attention drifts drowsily to the suspended memories of their past battles, and settles on some past image of him and 2B lying dead at her feet. "2B…" she whispers, touching her fingers lightly to the black silicon of her exposed chest plating. "She was happiest… when she got to die with you…"

His irritation returns at a boil and his fists clench. "How would _you_ know?"

It is Pod 153's voice that answers. "YORHA UNIT A2 EXPERIENCED A SYNAPTIC ALIGNMENT EVENT WITH UNIT 2B AFTER A HIGH-INTENSITY EMP ATTACK FROM A GOLIATH CLASS MACHINE LIFEFORM."

"When?! 2B was already—!"

Words fail as his mind catches up. The sword. 2B was so serious all the time; of course she would put her memory data somewhere the virus couldn't get it while she wandered off to die alone. EMP blasts wreaked all sorts of havoc on an android's systems. Memory convergence is not bizarre if she was actually out using Virtuous Contract to fight when it happened.

He shoves his hand against A2 hard enough that they both stumble and fall to the white path. He feels feverishly hot and out of sync with himself, half of him in the present trying to isolate and remove 2B's data while the other half is back on the bridge where 2B where she finally smiled and called him Nines with her dying breath. A2's face is solemn in both places. He hates her in both places. 2B's data being inside her is unforgivable. If 2B can't be there, A2 should disappear as well.

Consciously, he knows A2 never asked for her data and appearance to be re-used for 2B. And it doesn't take a scanner to figure out that 2B asked to be killed. But it hurts. Six thousand, two hundred and ninety-six hours since she died; and it still hurts. Even after all these months and all his time in the company of a human, and he cannot bear the torture of seeing 2B's face on someone who isn't 2B. He could almost forgive A2 if only she didn't look like her. If only she didn't have the same _face_.

The data wrenches loose while A2's body jerks beneath him. He forgets her immediately, climbing to his feet to cradle the block of shifting white light in his hand. The temptation to look at it and see what part of 2B's consciousness had merged into A2 is there, but he knows already what he is holding. The glow in his palm is why A2 did not kill him after 2B's death, no matter how many times he clashed with her. Why she refused to kill him when she clearly had ended other lives of his and went as far as giving her own life.

_'2B wanted you to become a good person.'_

_'2B hated to keep killing you. It caused her so much pain.'_

Those were not facts A2 had found somewhere in the tower or something 2B told her. Those words were 2B's feelings—scraps of her data that A2 had merged with and that A2 had to experience as though they were her own whether she wanted to or not.

9S is accustomed to simple feelings when it comes to A2. The fresh splash of anger that coils in his stomach is simple, but the flutter of pity and frustration and jealousy intertwining beneath it is new and softer than he can deal with. A2's word of mouth, even if it is the most authentic it could possibly be, is not how he wants to hear 2B's wishes and regrets.

It would be better if 2B... could tell him such important things herself.

He compresses the data and holds it close to his chest. Around him, the memories fade away and the local resolution decreases to set them both firmly back in the outer layers of the network. A2 rises back to her feet, and her eyes rise up over his head again. While he has no interest in trying to access her again, he can't help but follow her gaze.

There is another android high above them. One swathed in white.

"Commander?"

He runs the angular paths and climbs the excessive staircases to reach her, and this time there are no surprises. It's the Commander, exactly as she seemed. But he is at a loss for other reasons.

She isn't a YoRHa android.

He'd never thought about it; why should he have? She was the Commander whether she was one of them or not. But standard androids are not structured with the same mobility of compiled experience. She has no consciousness data because she has no black box. The network cannot structure her into a dynamic entity even though it should have everything she ever was.

If there is a single place 9S can discover the data Jackass and Pine want, it will be in her memory data. He hopes so, anyway. The Commander knew about humanity, but even she hadn't been aware of how black boxes were made or that they were all intended to be destroyed. The documents detailing that part of the plan had been above her clearance level.

9S has no idea who they might be, but the one who has the SS-level clearance is certainly the one Jackass is looking to kill.

He reaches out with his senses to assess his options. He isn't familiar with memory regions on standard models. His usual interface pathways are absent. A noise of annoyance warbles in his throat and he crosses his arms. It is wholly new territory, and a little bit of his old curious excitement accompanies the stubborn process of determining how to proceed. Perhaps de-solidifying the data and partitioning it into chunks he could search through more easily?

He materializes a seat, sits the packet of 2B's data down beside him, and opens his largest and most comprehensive set of interface readouts. His fingers skim and slide across them in a complex dance, and he sinks into an almost trance-like state. The encryption on the program that keeps the Commander's physical shape is the closest to a defensive barrier he has come across, and it poses no threat at all to him. The Commander is fairly antiquated as androids go. Not as old as Anemone, but he approximates she is over fifty. As he cracks the barrier, her form fragments and comes apart. His body tenses and he has to remind himself that it isn't the same as it would be for a machine or a YoRHa. She isn't there and she can't feel anything. It's only data.

She breaks down into a series of ten blocks, chronologically ordered. Somewhere among them, there had to be an answer, or at least a clue, but even the flattest data would come with a massive file size if it covered five years. He cannot take it all with him. He has doubts he will even be able to take one, and it will take all month if he tries to search the totality of her memories.

He starts at the beginning, just to get an idea of what he will be dealing with, but his intentions to get clarity on structure and the nature of how her memory is recorded quickly become the last thing on his mind. He had forgotten standard androids had one thing YoRHa didn't: false memories.

The version of her that appears on his screen has shorter hair. It is a darker, more hay-like blonde. She wears a big white hat with luxurious violets on the brim, pearly white earrings, lacy white gloves. She is swinging a little girl by her arms under a tree, in grass that seems to go on forever. Sunlight glimmers off both their smiles—the girl is missing a tooth. This version of the Commander is singing a simple tune.

They look like there is no one else in the whole world but them.

9S slaps at his screen until the connection closes, his black box racing. The memories aren't real. Everyone knows they aren't real. They have nothing to do with who she was as his commander, or as an android. So why does it feel like he has invaded some extremely private part of her?

His time is running out, so he clears his throat and flips forward to the second-to-last data packet. It is a record of activity on some other orbital satellite. This one is bigger than the Bunker by far and has a sort of atom-like structure with multiple bands around a command center. The Commander is busier, more talkative. Kind of nosy, really. Others address her as 'White'.

"This must be where you were stationed before the Bunker," he mumbles. He checks the last piece of that block to be certain.

At that point, she is walking the empty bunker with two androids he doesn't recognize. Their clothing is sharp, but nothing like the YoRHa standard he knows. This is definitely the block that contains the details of her appointment to be the Bunker's Commander. It is far too big for him to store, even on Pod. The lack of compartmentalization infuses every inconsequential second of her memory with detailed bits of experiential data. Emotional and psychological states, bio-feedback, and thoughts. Revealing as it is, it bloats the size well beyond what could be realistically transferred anywhere. Finding the data Jackass wants will take a more precise approach.

"Pod, run a scan for outgoing communications from the 9th and 10th partitions—private and high-priority with Operator-class or higher clearance."

"ACKNOWLEDGED."

He crosses his arms and leans backward, staring into the blank, grey-beige sky of the network. The two women with the Commander stick in his mind. They had a certain put-together aura around them that reminds him of operators. Though he doesn't know much about their lives on the Bunker, he knows O-types were never decommissioned or put in storage. Even if those had their memories erased a thousand times, they should have still been operational, but he doesn't recall ever seeing those two before.

He glances at the 9th data block. It's only a hunch, but it wouldn't be the first time his curiosity led him … well, somewhere.

Pod 153 announces she's done and provides him two packets of the Commander's outgoing communications records from the last ten years. One is far bigger than the other and that is certainly the one from her time on the Bunker, full of however many missions she must have overseen.

He reaches down to pick up 2B's data, but his hands only touch an empty spot on the seat beside him. It is nowhere to be seen, even as he rises and paces the platform in search of it, first cautiously and then like a caged animal. When it refuses to appear, he glowers into the empty air.

There is only one person who could do this. **"_N2!"_**

She materializes two feet off the ground with an expression of such cool disdain that he is momentarily disarmed. It's an expression he has come to associate specifically with V.

"Have you lost something, YoRHa Unit 9S?"

His sword forms in his hand. "Give it back."

She vanishes and reforms behind him, poking idly at the fragments of the Commander's memory. "We liked Attacker Number 2. She was the first of your kind we ever disillusioned. How much of her do you think made it in here?"

"What the hell does that have to do with 2B's data?!"

"I wonder. You came bearing a little bit of A2 inside you, and it was aware enough to recognize itself when you approached her. Conscious enough to move toward itself and become a little more whole. Then you took away a little bit of 2B that had been hiding in A2." She turns to face him. Her face blurs, and what replaces it is a vile contortion of a smile well beyond what the human face is capable of. "Do you think that little piece might have been conscious enough to get up and walk away from you?"

The sword blurs through her and cuts her out of existence, yet again.

* * *

"Ooooh, you look _pissed_. What'd you find this time?"

"God, Jackass, will you let him breathe for a minute before you start badgering him, you know he has to re-orient himself."

9S ignored the bickering of his caretakers and sat up. His ears weren't ringing, but his head felt ready to split open. Using a radio signal as a hacking interface was definitely not in his design specifications. On the bright side, he knew exactly where he was and what he was doing there. The disorientation he experienced before might have been a side effect of resisting disconnection.

But his core temperature was high and his mind was racing.

"He looks fine to me," said Jackass. "So, what happened?"

He stared at her. The more he tried to find a good place to begin, the less sure he was that such a place existed.

How did he say he found A2 and she had a chunk of 2B's data merged into her that had altered her behavior and caused her to give her life for him? That said piece of 2B may or may not have wandered off into the network by itself? How could he explain that he'd had a fragment of A2's consciousness data lodged in _him_ for months and there was no telling how that had affected his own emotions and behaviors?

Logic virus infection was the most omnipresent problem that could be encountered as a scanner, but that wasn't the only thing that could happen. Memory loss, personality data fragmentation, and synaptic alignment were all possibilities. Contamination risks were constant. It was the source of his post-tower fall aversion to hacking machines for data. He didn't want to see what they saw or feel what they felt, and he certainly didn't want to carry them with him. But he was likely carrying more than he realized already. A2 was the least of what he'd hacked in his lifetime. If being in the network at the same time was all it took, he could have pieces of Eve inside of him.

He could have pieces of Adam_._

The pulse of his black box slowed so suddenly he thought it must have stopped. Interfacing with Adam had not been a voluntary experience. The EMP strike from Grun severed his connection to his body and connected him to the machine network, and he stupidly went digging around, stupidly had to insist Adam was wrong, that they weren't the same.

In response, he had been flayed open to his very core.

Reconnecting with his damaged body had been painful, but it was nothing compared to the feeling of his thought processes being broken down and pulled apart from within. He'd had no barriers, no firewalls, nothing that he could attack or defend himself against. Everything Adam did, he did with impunity, and when he was done and 9S' consciousness overloaded, who was to say he hadn't left some small reminder, intentionally or not, of just how deeply he tore into the center of 9S' being and all that he found there while he was helpless to do anything but scream in denial—

"9S?"

His eyes refocused on Iota's face. She was staring at his hands.

One was clutching Virtuous Contract. Dark red oil ran down the white blade. Sparks were sputtering against the metal where it cut into the inner wires. The other was digging into his chest so painfully he could feel his plates creaking with every shallow, fluttering breath he took.

Iota's easily read expression betrayed her concerned curiosity as she helped him release his grip.

_Don't look at me Don'tLookAtMeDON'T—!_

The words were there, just behind his teeth, threatening to escape as a scream if he wouldn't let them out. Nausea swirled in his empty stomach and vomiting seemed so good, so perfect at that moment even though physical purging would not get out anything Adam might have left behind. A dozen disjointed thoughts of the copied city bombarded him, and his legs itched to run off into the snow.

Silently, he turned off some of his UI functions. They dimmed out and took the keenness of his emotions with them. That would do. That would do for keeping it all from boiling over into something they could see, something they would ask him to explain when he had gone every day since confiding in no one.

"Sorry, I'm... I'm fine." He hadn't heard himself lie so mechanically in a long time. "I found the Commander."

"White?" Jackass barked, crowding Iota away from him. "Did you get anything from her?"

9S mumbled something vague but affirmative and tried to flex his damaged fingers as Pod handled the exchange. Iota pulled his glove off and applied staunching gel. It'd do until they got back to camp. He heard her say something about suspending further investigation for at least 24 hours, and walked him back to the truck, supporting him under his shoulder as he stumbled on limbs that didn't feel connected to his body.

The jolt of the engine was so far away it felt as smooth as a purr. He continued detaching from exterior stimuli until his mind resembled the sky—packed in with pillowy snow that muffled the world and blanketed it evenly in white nothingness. Let the 9S in the future do the work of putting it all back. The 9S of that moment had earned the right to disconnect for a while.

A dream of disappearing into it with a black-clad figure wafted across his mind, and he couldn't tell if the one he imagined beside him was V or 2B.


	55. Respite

V surfaced sluggishly from a sea of white noise. Over the course of minutes which felt to him like both hours and seconds, his addled mind placed the sound as the whisper of sand shifting in the wind.

He hadn't been sleeping. No dreams nor any of the uneasy vacancy of a dream already forgotten occupied his mind. Little did, and several more empty-minded moments passed before his mind caught up to the fact that he was blinking and registered a faint brown-gold color inches from his face. Something was covering him, blocking sunlight filtering in from above. Dry wind ruffled its edges and drifted over his skin. Something heavy but soft was on top of them and sand-covered them from the shins down. The first fully formed thought he had was not of where he was or what circumstances had untethered him from his faculties, but that he was unbearably hungry.

Rough voices shouted in the distance, inquiring and frantic. Their words might as well have been in another language from where he lay.

A much closer voice shouted back. "Nothing this way! Have we checked the underground?!" Another vague yell he couldn't parse answered from somewhere too far away for him to care about. "Affirmative! I'll keep watch here!"

Footsteps came his way, scuffing stone and crunching sand. A thin needle of alarm pricked at his senses, but they didn't react and neither did he, even as the owner of said footsteps walked right up beside him. They shuffled down and their fingers reached beneath the shroud to grasp his own. The heat of their touch bloomed pleasantly against his skin.

Skin… His mind sluggishly caught up to the implications of what he was feeling and how directly he was feeling all of it. He wrenched his hand free of the strange fingers holding them, sat up, and dragged the leather cloak off of his body. The sunlight, stronger than he had taken the time to consider, punished him immediately.

"GOOD MORNING, V."

That was Pod.

"Easy, easy! Are you alright? Do you need anything?"

That was… not 9S.

He blocked the light with a hand and blinked the tears from his stinging eyes. A red-headed android leaned over him with raised brows and a fretful frown. Her name escaped him. Almost everything about her escaped him, but he had a far more pressing concern than who she was.

"Why am I naked?"

Her head whipped sideways, eyes so wide they were nearly all white, but determinedly averted. "The—the pod said you might die if I didn't!"

"AFFIRMATIVE. PROPOSAL: V SHOULD RETURN TO RESTING POSITION."

He ignored both of them and looked at his arms. Griffon was eerily silent and Shadow... She was the heavy thing on his legs. Her red eyes flicked open and she leaned into his exploratory touch with a soft chuff, but there was little warmth to her, and she wasn't purring. Like his tattoos, she lacked the pitch black coloration that was her norm.

"You really should lie back down," the android urged quietly. "There's a scouting team out to find you right now, so there's nowhere we can go."

That time the advice sank in and he sank with it against the sunbaked sand. Hooding his eyes against the strong sunlight, he tried to connect his present condition with his last memories.

He got in the elevator, he got out of the elevator, and… He'd had to climb for a stretch to get back to the bridge. The only path he could follow in his condition was a steep uphill hike, sometimes requiring Pod to physically drag him up a rock face he did not have the energy for. This had included a leap through the spray of a waterfall that doused him afresh. The shock of that was a bright point of clarity sharp as a sliver of glass lodged in his spine.

Everything that came after was a blur of foggy but equally unpleasant assaults. The heatless sun shining down between thick cloud patches and blinding him as the light bounced from the undisturbed snow. Wet, crunching steps that began to feel like a firewalk as the cold ate toward his bones. Wind-driven flurries scouring his face and forearms whenever he couldn't find a building to duck into to keep out of the wind.

He'd had a sudden urge to turn around and go somewhere other than the desert. A struggle ensued. After that-

"Here."

A familiar green bottle appeared above him. The water inside was sun-warmed as everything else, and he greedily drained it by half before the slightly metallic taste became too much to swallow. Wiping his mouth, he pushed the bottle back into the android's hands and stared at her restless, avoidant gaze. Gray-blue eyes—that meant she was YoRHa, but he recalled she didn't have a designation. She had a normal name and she had been with him in the ravine…but not for the rest.

"You weren't there."

It was more of an observation than an indictment, but she drooped and her fingers began to twitch and pick guiltily at her clothes. "I'm sorry. I looked and looked and you weren't anywhere in the ravine so… I went and got all your things. I knew if I kept them with me I'd be able to find you."

There was something odd about that logic. He couldn't place his finger on what, but she had clearly found him sometime between then and now so it wasn't as though he could call her incorrect.

"Where are my clothes?"

"REPORT: DRYING PROCESS 79% COMPLETE. IT IS NOT ADVISED FOR V TO BE SEEN IN A YORHA UNIFORM AT THIS TIME."

There it was again, a tiny piece of evidence that something troublesome had occurred between the points where his memories stopped and now. His mind refused to cooperate despite a swarm of questions, each more aggravating than the last. The harder he tried to remember, the more insistently his skull ached in time with the intensifying throb at his temples.

"A report." He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. "Give me a report of what happened."

"MISSION LOG: SUBJECT V SUCCESSFULLY TRAVELLED FOR 22 MINUTES AND 54 SECONDS BEFORE HYPOTHERMIC SYMPTOMS INHIBITED PROGRESS. V ATTEMPTED TO RETURN TO PREVIOUS OPERATIONAL SITE IN THE CITY RUINS SOUTH SECTOR, AT WHICH TIME THIS POD AND SUPPORT UNIT SHADOW EXPEDITED V TOWARD THE SET DESTINATION.

UPON ARRIVAL TO THE DESERT OUTPOST AREA, THIS POD WAS FORMULATING AN ANTI-DETECTION STRATEGY WHEN SUBJECT V SUDDENLY BEGAN TO RUN. BECAUSE SUBJECT V WAS IN POOR CONDITION AND CARRYING A BROKEN SWORD, THIS ACTION WAS INTERPRETED AS A SIGN OF VIRAL ACTIVITY BY LOCAL ANDROID FORCES. IN RESPONSE TO DEFENSIVE HOSTILITY, SUPPORT UNIT SHADOW TOOK OFFENSIVE ACTION."

"That's a real damn dry way of putting it," the android interrupted. She crossed her arms and frowned up at pod. "Four androids at the outpost and Shadow pinned them all up against the cliffs by their joints before they could get more than a few shots off. The resistance frequencies were all going off about it, and they're still running around scared shitless!"

"Is that how you found me?" asked V.

"It's how I got to you so fast. I was already looking for you. Your sword was glowing so I knew you had to have come back."

"…You mean my cane."

"I have that too."

She reached under her cloak—which he noted by the damp but much cleaner edges was his; she must have swapped them so he would be covered with something dry—and stabbed his cane down into the sand. He ran his fingers over the handle, and let the familiar grip ground him. If what they said was true, it was possible he had made his own situation far worse.

"Was I identified?"

"Not accurately. They're looking for a fully uniformed YoRHa with gray hair and they mistook your tattoos for advanced damage to your anti-EMP coating."

His eyes flicked up to the strands of his hair hanging in his face. Like Shadow, it was black, but only in the by the most forgiving definition.

"UNIT FERN ARRIVED 4 MINUTES AND 27 SECONDS AFTER SHADOW'S ATTACK CEASED AND CARRIED SUBJECT V TO A SECURE LOCATION TO AVOID DETECTION AND ASSIST RE-WARMING EFFORTS. REMOVAL OF WET CLOTHING WAS A PART OF THIS PROCEDURE AS RECOMMENDED BY THIS POD'S MEDICAL ARCHIVES." Pod's antennae whirred slowly, and he tilted his blank metal face down. "…SUBJECT V WAS NOT A COOPERATIVE PATIENT."

"Hmph."

Fern gave a crooked, placating smile and raised her hands. "It's fine, Pod. He was confused, and he doesn't know me very well. It was probably scary."

"I doubt it." Humiliating was likely the better descriptor and he was glad to have forgotten, but a rolling, plaintive growl from his stomach further denied him any sense of self-sufficiency in this situation.

"Are you hungry?" asked Fern.

"Well observed."

She managed to both sit at attention and wriggle in place. "Uhm! I can…! Will you eat if I bring something?"

"I've little choice. Just none of your more exotic catches." He wasn't fully sure what he meant by that, but he trusted his own judgment.

If she minded his sarcasm, she didn't let on. Her eyes brightened and she was nearly vibrating in place. "I'll bring you something good, I promise!" She ambled up and almost out of sight before skidding to a stop half-way around the edge of a rock face. "Will you be alright all alone?"

"Would _you_ be bothered with me if you walked in and saw me like this?" he huffed.

"I'd avoid you. But everyone's all riled up right now so who knows what they'll do. I know you said it was a bad idea at the park, but if someone finds you like this, you really should kill them before they get any ideas."

V watched her vanish around the bend with an almost nauseating déjà vu. 9S had said the same thing when they first met, but he had a vastly different context for his words. Was she just like that because…

It came back to him. The cycle she went through with her memories. The fire, the shack, and the murder—the one Fern, formerly 8E, had committed in order to keep the Nelo sword out of android hands. It was possibly the worst timing he could have picked to have a hostile interaction with resistance androids, but the alternative was to have died in the cold. And he had come close. His fingers tingled and his feet itched with either his healing factor or frostbite or both.

Never mind that he had no idea what to do next.

V lifted an arm to his forehead to block the strong sunlight and paused. Despite divesting him of everything else, Fern had not taken the bracelet away. His time in the basin was unaffected by his trek through the cold. Every detail was as bright and real as it was unbelievable, just like the bracelet itself. He reached for it, thought better of it, and let a sigh escape as he closed his eyes.

_Soft and suffering heart that loved me so..._

Pod whirred down beside him. "REPORT: '_SONNET TO MY MOTHER'_, H. HEINE."

V shot Pod a blank look. He could have sworn he didn't say that aloud. "…You were quick to identify that."

"SUBJECT V HAS RECITED APPROXIMATELY 27 LINES OF THIS AUTHOR'S WORK SINCE THE ONSET OF SYMPTOMS RELATED TO REDUCED BRAIN FUNCTION."

That was too much for V to unpack, so he didn't. Without a word, he pulled the cloak up over his body. Perhaps until he warmed up a bit more it was better to take Pod's advice and rest. Silently.

The next moment he became aware of he was upright. Fern was sitting right next to him looking all too pleased. There was a meaty, slightly burnt taste on his tongue and the distinct scent of boar musk in his nose. While he sat there trying to fully re-establish his place in his own body, she handed him a steaming chunk of meat like it was the most natural thing in the world for her to hand-feed him as though he were an infant.

He opened his mouth with the intent to put her in her place, but instinct bulldozed into his feebly returning sense of reason. Ravenous hunger beat words by far and he snapped his teeth shut on her fingers.

Fern yelped. Her hand snatched back from his mouth, her expression one equally betrayed and dumbfounded.

"Unintended," V explained curtly. H spat, but red oil clung stubbornly to his teeth, filled his mouth with an acrid taste and vile sliminess. "How long were you gone?"

"Uh…Two or three hours? Finding animals in the desert was kind of hard."

"Enough time then." He wiped his mouth with her cloak and tossed it aside. "My clothes."

Her eyes snapped straight up and fixed on the sky. "Wait, wait, wait! It's quieter now but the resistance is still active!"

"I had a resistance shirt under the coat," he said, bracing on his cane to get back on his feet. "And I hardly think only YoRHa wear black pants."

Pod 042 obliged his request without any backchat and V quickly and gratefully made himself decent. Despite her fussing, Fern seemed as relieved by the change as V did. He considered the rest of the meat, but his hunger was strangely absent. Looking over the remains, he had eaten quite a lot before his mind caught up with his body, so it perplexed him that he'd been voracious enough to bite her just a few moments ago.

Concerns for another time. He grabbed his cane and the half-empty bottle, and Shadow melted back into her place on his body. Washing Fern's oil from his mouth, he wandered through the darkened arch of the stone tunnel.

"Careful!" she called, ambling after him. "There's a hole there."

Not exactly hard to miss as it was surrounded by a formation of solid ruddy stones jutting up from the ground. He stepped casually around it. At the mouth of the tunnel, crags and sand and dry scrub sprawled toward the city. By their proximity to the massive, worryingly crooked skyscrapers where the city ended and the desert began, they weren't very far away from the outpost.

A faint but familiar sensation hummed on the edge of his senses, and he looked over his shoulder at Fern. "You said you had my sword."

She tensed and lowered her gaze. "I… yes. I only touched it because I didn't know where you were and I knew it would lead me to you. I promise I'll put it back where I found it as soon as I can."

"Don't be a fool. There's no point in taking the risk to return it to the park. You picked it up, so you can just keep carrying it."

"…Really?"

"_Again_." He gestured at his wasting, bony frame. "I have little choice in the matter."

"Well, I mean… It's just…"

A deep breath helped to keep his headache from re-surfacing. "Spit it out."

"You wanted my help to find another orb but there wasn't one."

"And?"

"I figured you would go back to the kid now," she said with an unexpectedly subdued frown. "There's nothing I can do for you that he couldn't, and I caused you a lot of trouble…"

He squinted at her. Fern wasn't all that much bigger than 9S. She looked young, though not quite as young, yet her childishness went far, far deeper. Perhaps that was to be expected. '8E' was years old and drowned by the pressures of her own design; 9S was years old and had already admitted he was in the process of rotting away and dying before V appeared after the collapse of his whole world. Comparatively, 'Fern' had only existed for a few months and all her concerns seemed to revolve around V—whose existence and intentions she accepted with no skepticism no question.

"There is something," he sighed begrudgingly. "You can sense magic."

He drummed his fingers along his cane and idly tilted the bottle. The perforation between this world and hell was closed. Ideally, no more would open, but he had a feeling that the gods had other intentions. He'd told his mother he would break their curse, and that was as good as an oath in his eyes, but the question was how. If he had his choice he would just kill the gods and be done with it, but 9S felt nothing in the church, and even if Fern's unusual sensitivity allowed her to perceive the gods, the battlefield they had to be confronted on was not one an android could reach.

He sat. His mind was clear, but his body was still tired. He suspected that he needed sleep before he was fully recovered, but he couldn't relax while he didn't know what he needed to do next. Fern sat next to him, meticulous as ever in how she balanced her desire to be close to him with an appropriately reverent distance. Her face was aglow with the possibility that she could remain useful to him.

He intended to make use of that, but he needed to better understand the scope of the ability.

"When and how did you discover me?"

"O-oh? Uhm." Hems and haws and everything but actual answers spilled from her lips until she took note of his body tensing as his patience ran out. "It was in December, I think? You were..." Her eyes squeezed shut. It would not have surprised him if she suddenly blushed, but true to her construction, not a hint of color came to her cheeks. "bathing…"

"Stop mumbling."

"Bathing, you were BATHING, okay?!"

His lips flattened to a razor-thin line, and his features darkened with a thoroughly unimpressed scowl. "This body has been known to attract the sort of scum who only target weaklings, but I did not think it would also attract degenerates."

"I was just looking at your markings!"

"That's not the denial you seem to think it is."

"Androids don't usually bathe," she insisted, apologetic yet clearly sulking over her disregarded innocence. "I just thought you were some weird YoRHa until the first time I saw you fight a machine. Your combat program, er… your fighting style, I guess, is... wrong? For an android, anyway. We don't fight with electricity; it's too much of a risk. Even machines only build really specialized units for that."

"That much of a giveaway then." Good thing he hadn't been traveling through the outpost with Griffon. Who knew what kind of panic he might have caused.

"You also didn't pay any of the salvageable parts any mind, even though some of them were really valuable. YoRHa are specialized, but they're not _that_ different, and you still need money if you're planet-side."

"So you didn't identify me by magic at all, is what I'm hearing."

She tilted her head and fretted at a lock of her hair. "It's hard to explain. I always got a weird feeling, but I didn't realize it was you until you left the city. By the time I put it together and tried following it you were already too far away—I kept winding up at the amusement park or this one skyscraper near the resistance camp."

Perhaps not a strong sense then, but a precise one. "Sounds like you knew exactly where to find me when I was in the city. Yet you stayed away. Just because of 9S?"

"I don't…" Her fingers twisted against her stomach. She turned her face away, but not enough to hide her sickly grimace. "I don't feel good when I'm near him... I can't explain it—but he was taking good care of you and compared to him I was so busted I was basically junk... So I just… kept my distance."

Sounded like the method she used to wipe her memory was just as faulty as all the times she had tried it in the past. Perhaps the little part of her that always turned to forgetting as a solution knew that 9S posed a threat to her blissful ignorance. Unconsciously, she might know that 9S had caused her to recover her memory once before. Her evasiveness was rational, even clever, if that were the case.

"And you just had that shack ready to go in case he failed?" he asked. Mostly to keep her from lingering on the subject. The last thing he needed was for something to jar loose and spill the dormant 8E out of her.

A shrill burst of laughter fluttered from her mouth before she managed to choke it back in. "It was just something I did to entertain myself! After watching you I knew you needed food and water and warmth and a place to sleep and—w-well, that's not the point! The point is I built it for me. I didn't—I never actually believed you'd come to that place. Or that I'd get to protect you."

It was all too easy to imagine her sitting in the place by herself, arranging all the details, soothing herself with human things she barely understood. No wonder it was meticulous to the point of sanctity. It was a dollhouse, and she'd built it intending to be its only occupant, not including whatever imaginary versions of him she no doubt entertained there.

In the distance, a pair of androids waved in a sign V could quite make out. Fern waved back, and they moved on. She leaned forward to wrap her arms around her knees.

"Is there something I should do if you disappear like that again? I looked for hours. I waited. But you didn't come back for a whole week."

"Not that I intend to visit again any time soon but keep waiting. Time is funny in hell. It wasn't seven days for me."

She peered sideways at him to judge if he was being serious or not and quickly turned back to the sand when she concluded that he was. "Right, demons, hell, and… all that. What _are_ you intending to do now? How can I help?"

He gazed down at his palm and flexed his fingers. The basin had given him demonic magic straight from the source, but he would not find more of that. Whatever this world had left that wasn't maso—that was what he'd need if he wanted to stand any chance. "I need a strong source of magic, for which I will rely on your uncanny senses."

"A strong source of magic…" Her face scrunched up in thought, eyes focused but lively with the clarity of her mission. "I think there might be something farther out in the desert. But I don't know how strong it will be; you and the orb have been the strongest feelings I've had."

"That's good enough to start." He poured some of the water over his head and swept his hair out of his face. "You've told me where you found the orb and why you retrieved it, but what of the rest? What exact circumstances led you to it?"

"Oh, I was just kinda… hanging out on the old radio tower. I liked it there. I would catch glimpses of you heading into the forest kingdom sometimes. It was supposed to snow so I didn't think I'd see you, but then it was like… it was like the air was pinching, and suddenly you felt really close by. But when I went to investigate, I found the orb instead."

"How long were you holding onto it?"

"Like an hour?" The silence must have gone on longer than he thought. She turned to him and searched the incredulous lines in his brow. "…Did I say something wrong?"

"Only an hour? You're _sure_?"

The intensity of his tone caused her to shy back. "Well I… I don't know if it was _exactly_ an hour, just... When I got back to the surface there was a bunch of smoke coming from the park so I—"

The rest of her words dissolved before they reached his ears. The same day as the fire. The same _hour_. He'd thought it too great a coincidence that a portal, even a tiny one like that, opened so close to him. Little did he know how right he'd been.


	56. Vague Hope

"NO NEW MESSAGES."

Same as the last three times he'd tried it today.

9S dropped into a low squat beside the cold black block of the teleporter and lowered his head against his knees. Wet footsteps slapped and sloshed through the half-melted snow and mapped across his aural sensors like the busy march of ants. Their crisp voices seemed to echo in place in the heavy air, but his mind was too crowded to process what any of them were saying.

_Where **are** you, V?_

The steam of his quickened breaths clouded his vision. Cutting his UI off for a while had proved fortuitous, but what little rest it earned him already felt like a faded dream.

If Rho really had seen some evidence of Humility before her death, it wasn't there anymore. Gamma's investigation team had just about dismantled the roller coaster platform and turned up nothing. Speaking to the park machines had been just as ineffectual. Turned out they weren't particularly good at telling one android from the other without significantly different details, so they were only able to account for three: two who wore black, and had black and white hair, and one with red hair. The first was clearly 9S himself. The second had to be V. Through his dimmed functions, 9S had failed to reach an appropriately guarded state when that information reached him. He'd failed to do much of anything other than sit and let Iota repair the damage he'd done to his fingers with Virtuous Contract.

Gamma took one look at him and made the shrewd and ruthlessly efficient decision to pass him by and talk directly to 4S. It proved to be a stroke of fortune so incredible 9S still didn't quite believe it had happened to him.

Compared to traveling through the forest and out through the city, cutting through Pascal's village and the amusement park offered a shorter, safer, and minimally unstable path to transport a 130kg body. That was the path Pine and Jackass had taken 11S, so it was the one 4S had followed. Clear motivation, excellent reason to be evasive of machines and androids alike on the way, and most importantly: black hair and black clothes. 9S couldn't have made up a story that perfect if he tried.

Even the matter of the android with red hair was muddled by Aconite's on-going absence. Most likely she was stalking around, hunting for Lobelia's killer on her own, and while her hair was short it was a shade of red a machine wouldn't mistake even at a distance.

With so many confounding variables in play, Theta turned to Jackass for a technological answer to the problem.

9S didn't know what she'd been expecting. Whatever the Army was used to with Rho, Jackass wasn't like that. All attempts to get her to do anything that didn't involve completing her review of the Commander's data were met with a resounding '**Fuck Off**'. Then, around fourteen hours ago, she had erupted with the intensity of one of her bombs, abusively commandeered a truck, and peeled out of the camp. Nobody'd heard from her since.

The Commander's data was filled with log after log of personal communications. The cause YoRHa was built on was important to her. Maybe even noble in her eyes. But over time, her regrets and the weight of her knowledge grew heavier. In private, she was just as unable to prohibit her emotions as the rest of them. Almost all of her letters had been blocked by the automatic censors.

Almost all of them had been addressed to Jackass.

The camp had grown still after that. Held its breath for the next action, the next command; any sign that the trail was not too broad or too cold. That there was still concrete action that could be taken.

The SOS granted their wish.

Fully uniformed YoRHa at the desert outpost. Gray hair, severe surface damage, possibly infected. All details 9S could have taken at face value, but then the injured were brought into camp. He recognized the puncture wounds that had barely left their limbs attached, as well as their incoherent screams about an unknown weapon they could only describe as something that looked like tar but moved like metal filings around a magnet. They thought it was a YoRHa weapon. An incorrect hypothesis that left 9S in the precarious position of being badgered for answers he couldn't give while growing steadily more overwhelmed.

Something was wrong. Something had happened to V. It didn't matter that V had told him they needed to be apart or that 9S was trying to keep him from being discovered. His base protocols screamed at him that he should never have left him in the care of such a shady android. None of this would have happened if—

White boots clicked down at the top edge of his visual field. "Expecting a message, Unit 9S?"

He sighed without bothering to look up. He'd become very familiar with the sound of Theta's voice. "I wish. If Jackass told me she was waiting at the alloy site right now, I'd run there."

"It'd be wise. But I suspect after reading your Commander's memoirs, she will remain truant until she cools down." She paused, and her weight shifted. "Not carrying 2B's sword today?"

His fingers curled into painful fists. He was 'Unit 9S' always, but 2B's name had become a casual utterance to Theta and it drove him a little crazier every time. "Repair officer's orders."

"How diligent of you. Unless you'd like to continue squatting, can I make you a peace offering?"

That got him to raise his head. "Huh?!"

Her lips curved into a subtle smirk. "Well, I say peace offering, but it hardly matters if you accept it or not. Consider it more a show of intent. Come with me."

9S planted his hands on his knees and stood up. There were dozens of things he wanted to be doing, from finding 2B's data to directly contacting Pod 042 and V; purging whatever trash he'd assimilated through hacking to repairing 11S. Spending time with Theta was not on the list, but given a lack of other options (and admittedly a bit of curiosity), he obeyed.

The resistance members gave him an unusually wide berth as they crossed through the camp's center and into the dim tunnels of scaffolding.

"Paranoia is a useful survival tool," Theta said coolly from ahead of him. "But it's also thoughtless and irrational. You didn't provide a satisfactory explanation, so you'll find the camp remains suspicious of you."

"A lot of them were already suspicious of me." His eyes lowered. "Nothing's different."

"That's factually incorrect. On top of two dead androids, there are now four grievously injured and an unknown weapon or enemy in play. And the only thing they have in common is a recurring YoRHa presence."

"Pod already confirmed we never had that kind of technology. That's—"

"The truth. I'm aware." Her arms crossed, index finger tapping deliberately at her skin. "I'm growing concerned about your unexpectedly persistent attachment to the concept."

He stopped in his tracks, and his voice lowered to a wary rumble. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Theta spun and gripped the scaffolding on either side of his head, trapping him in place. Under the pressure of her hollow stare, he could only squirm against the frigid poles at his back and neck as she closed in. Her words reached his face as steam and his ears as the rustle of a snake among dry leaves.

"It means you should have lied."

His black box raced so quickly the pulse was nearly continuous. Scanner or not, he was combat-ready, and he'd never had anyone who wasn't an enemy be so aggressive with him. He was designed to attack in this situation. He _wanted_ to attack. But he couldn't afford to direct lethal force at her now of all times. As a fail-safe, he began to log data. Any data he could, which was mostly the details of her face. The subtle shine of the camera lens beneath her pupils. Gold eyes—the one thing that wasn't the same as the woman who appeared in Beepy's memory. Same silver hair. Same oddly cut bangs on the left side of her face, though she wore a tight, efficient bun instead of braids. She didn't have her predecessor's intense scowl, or foul mouth, or questionable fashion sense, but they were nearly the same.

As alike, and as different, as A2 and 2B.

Keeping his hands carefully at his sides, he raised his chin to match her stare. "There's no point in lying. The truth always comes to light."

"I'm not saying it doesn't. I'm saying you should be smart enough to make other arrangements in the meantime."

All his thoughts of V flashed through him and he instinctively snapped his forehead forward against hers. Pops of light and chromatic aberration dazzled his visual field. They both sagged with their heads in their hands, but it was better by far than letting her see anything vulnerable or exploitable in his expression.

Gamma stalked between them; hands curled into tight, prepared fists. "Is there a problem, Commander Theta?"

Theta regained herself, blinked twice, and tugged her clothes back into place with a vexed sigh. "None. Thank you, Gamma. I was just showing 9S to the private area where we'll be keeping the scanners."

He curled his lip at the expression. She made it sound like they were books or spare parts she could store for when she needed them. It turned out to be the exact opposite. They had taken the liberty of moving 4S and 11S. The scaffolding had been re-arranged and extended with a few cinderblocks and wooden planks to provide them a sequestered area. Iota was busily checking on all of 11S' connectors, and 4S was scrolling away at a readout, totally unbothered.

"What…is this?"

"Arrangements," Theta said tartly.

"Until such time as the unknown weapon is conclusively identified," Gamma explained. "Units 4S and 11S will be kept to a private repair area. Unit 9S, you are free to come and go, but you should be mindful that you are the only fully operational scanner, and you have a reputation."

"If Jackass bothers to turn up, you should take the opportunity to make yourself scarce. I'd even been willing to let you consult with Emil if you chose—supervised, of course." Theta's smile still didn't reach her eyes, but the unsettling effect was cut in half by the way her fingers unconsciously touched at her forehead. Served her right. "I hope you'll think about what I told you, Unit 9S."

As they departed, he thought he heard Gamma chiding the commander, but he missed exactly what for.

He sat on a cot and prodded gently at his stinging forehead. Theta's advice was unwanted but not incorrect—why she had given it and why she had taken the initiative to protect them…well, she was a commander. Whatever else she had planned, it was her primary job to keep whatever hive she was part of running in an orderly fashion. Chaos was her enemy, and 9S could understand that much. There was plenty of room for all of them in the main repair area. There should have been no need to move, but two YoRHa sharing a space with severely damaged androids who believed they had been attacked with an unknown YoRHa weapon would create a powder keg.

The resistance was tiptoeing around on glass to preserve the peace, and if it broke for any reason, it was 4S and 11S who would take the fall. If he wanted to keep V and the other scanners safe, he had to keep a cool head. This wasn't the time to be fighting with Theta or spinning his wheels.

Across from him, Iota made a satisfied cooing sound as she finished a scan of 11S. "No new irregularities, see? A nice and easy relocation." She took hold of his hand and gently smoothed his overgrown hair. "Both your friends are here. They are looking forward to you waking up."

9S watched her repeat various iterations of this for a few moments before he leaned over and nudged 4S. "What is she doing…?"

4S looked up with his lip caught between his gnawing teeth. "Hunh? Oh, she's providing positive external stimuli."

"Okay... Why?"

"Some human practice that correlated empathy with better recovery? I think she called it 'bedside manner.'" He tilted his head and turned back to his read-out. "It's a little weird seeing a repair officer do it, but I talked to him a lot too when I was modding him. Can't hurt right?"

What 9S remembered of repair were a bunch of androids in the maintenance and development area that ranged from temperamental to openly belligerent. There was even a scanner among them, granted he was weird. Almost a hybrid unit. He handled maintenance-related inventory and complex repairs, but he also had access to expanded memory capacity. That was usually reserved for Healer units.

9S had been in his care when his body was returned to the Bunker full of holes after 2B killed Adam, and had been scolded pretty much the entire time. "I can't imagine 801S doing that."

4S went very still on the cot next to him.

Under his coat, 9S' skin prickled and he rubbed self-consciously at his arms. If 9S had to guess what 4S treasured, he would pin it on his friends every time. "Sorry... I shouldn't have brought him up."

The clouds shifted. A ray of light broke through and bathed them in a moment of stark white and hard-edged shadows. It passed in seconds and left both of them still in its wake for several minutes. When the words came, they weren't blurted. A deep breath preceded them, and they came out like threads being carefully untangled from a bramble patch.

"When the wide-area virus appeared, we…" His chest squeezed and his fingers with them, but 2B's sword was not there. 9S wasn't sure why he wanted to pursue this topic now of all times. Maybe it was because it had already happened and that made it simple. It wasn't a secret he had to keep or a worry he had to nurse. Maybe he just couldn't help it. Who else could he say any of this to and not need to explain a word of it, or why it was important? "We tried to contact command and let someone know what was happening. It was already too late. Communications were jammed from the other side. I managed to upload us to the server, and we used a black box reaction to trigger a Bunker-side reinitialization."

"That means… You were actually there?"

9S nodded. "Nothing was obviously wrong when we arrived but that didn't last. We watched all the operators turn. All the combat units that stayed on for security reasons. We tried to get the Commander out. 2B and I fought through waves of infected units. They were still talking. Even if it was only a little, they were still aware. Still themselves. We made it all the way to the elevator, and down to the hangar, but by the time we got there, the Commander…" He clenched his eyes shut and drew his legs up onto the cot, close to his chest. "She ordered us to leave without her. It was fast. Maybe twenty minutes."

4S was quiet for a long stretch. When he finally did respond, it was with a shudder and a slow, steady breath and the tiniest 'wow' he'd ever heard.

"11S was the last scanner I spoke to," 9S went on quietly, flicking his eyes to the other cot. "Until I found you in the castle. He was nagging me to sync to the server so you could all run updates."

"…You always were airheaded." 4S tilted his head down into 9S' periphery and offered a fragile smile. "But it probably saved our lives. If we had been fully updated, we probably would have been taken over at the same time as all the combat units. We might not be the only scanners who made it."

"Maybe." 9S hesitated, but he needn't have. Going back into the network copy was inevitable, but he would be in there forever if he just wandered around hoping to find people. "If you can help, there might be a way to know for sure. The Commander wasn't the only one I found in the network."

4S lowered his read-out and gave him his complete attention. 9S told him everything that had happened inside the Ark. Even the parts about N2, A2, and 2B's data. Behind the visor, 4S face remained still, but his fingers began to drum rapidly against his knees.

His head jerked toward Iota. "That was okay? With her here, I mean?"

"That's all personal," Iota said matter-of-factly. "Commander Theta already knows you're looking for data in there."

"It's more than data though!" 4S chewed at his lip, and scratched at his clean, but still thoroughly overgrown hair. "YoRHa data, the structure of it is—It can be moved anywhere. If we have bodies there's no reason we can't—"

"_Stop_," 9S pleaded in a thick, rasping voice. "Please."

"What? What's wrong? Why?"

9S parted his lips, but the truth stuck in his throat. 4S was so excited, and if he shot that down and told him the truth now of all times, they would never recover. Theta's words slithered through his memory, but he couldn't. He couldn't make himself lie.

So he just told a piece of the truth. "It's not the kind of problem we can solve by finding the closest android manufacturing site. Every YoRHa we want to transfer means getting access to a clear-state black box. And we'd need about three hundred if we wanted to transfer everyone."

"But…"

"4S. It was our purpose to die for a lie and we're alive despite that. Nobody is going to help us, and even if they wanted to, YoRHa are manufactured in a fully automated facility. The person Jackass wants to find and kill for _creating_ us is probably the only one who knows the location."

4S's head dropped and his lips pressed to a thin, white slash. 9S could tell he wasn't done with the idea, and he envied that stubbornness, but the whole truth was so much worse than that. He didn't know what the black box was made of. 9S promised them both he would tell him the real reason as soon as he could. Any moment but now.

"I told you so I could get your help identifying them." He let his features soften. "The network is huge. It's hard even know where I am, much less identify single units when there's no black box signal. If I can find them, then the ones who aren't in there-"

"Should still be alive," 4S finished, the excitement rushing back to his face. "I'll have to look at your triangulation algorithms and come up with some simulations for you to run… I don't suppose you could just ask N2?" 9S shot him a dirty look and he quickly held up his hand. "Just asking, nothing wrong with using everything you can, forget I said it."

They were quiet again, but the air between them had a nostalgic sensation to it. The distinctive fizz of multiple scanners deliberating over a unique problem. If it were any less of a heavy subject than it was, it would have been impossible to get either of them to shut up. 9S gave it a day or two at best before that became the case anyway.

"Who're you betting on?" 4S asked with a grin.

"Betting on...?"

"Yeah, for who survived."

9S jerked back, his brows scrunching until they nearly touched as his fingers gripped at his collar. "What the hell?! That's so morbid!"

"It's the opposite of morbid. You know what kind of stories I told me and 11S when I was climbing that cliff? Stupid ones that couldn't possibly come true. So, I'm allowed to bet on 1S. I'm allowed to think 'Oh, that guy? He's always been the reliable type, I bet he made it." His voice cracked just a little at the end. He sniffed and adjusted his visor. "Come on. If your space cadet antics gave scanners a fighting chance, who do you think we'll meet again?"

"...3S. He was the server administrator, he was the oldest, and he never left the Bunker. He had to have known something was wrong, right?"

"Did you see him up there? Him or 801S?"

"No, why?"

The twitch of a smile tugged at 4S' mouth, but he quickly bit his lip to hide it and went back to his readout. "I think it's probably more likely 801S got out."

"Why him? 801S was like the last scanner model they made—he has no experience."

4S hummed, tilted his head faintly up toward 11S, and offered a coy murmur. "Woman's intuition."

The two small words filled 9S with the sharp recollection of a twin room where the scanners gathered whenever they could. Usually, just three or four of them, occasionally the full group whenever the Commander had a major operation planned or decided that a recuperation day would be psychologically beneficial. They would sit in a circle. 3S and 801S, the oldest and youngest scanners who were often quiet because they were never assigned to planet-side missions. 4S sitting between 11S and 1S, going on and on about some human paraphernalia he found while 1S read a book that 11S kept not-so-subtly trying to peek at. 32S describing every insignificant but cool thing on the ground while 42S followed crassly along adding every annoying inconvenience.

4S had a talent for complicated predictive analyses and liked to say his accuracy came from 'woman's intuition'—another human concept that made about as much sense as anything else. "Didn't 42S give you a really stupid nickname because you say stuff like that?"

"An **incredibly** stupid nickname," 4S agreed bittersweetly. He rested his hand on his cheek, and gently imitated 42S' jovial cadence without his distinctive lack of volume control. "_Heya 4-Cast, what's the weather like these days~?_'

It was accurate enough that 9S' mouth pressed into a trembling frown. None of them would ever get those treasured times back, but at that moment, giving them up felt like the worst thing possible. It might be irresponsible to hope for much after everything that had happened, but… With 4S and 11S alive, he couldn't help hoping that 4S' prediction was just as correct as all of his other ones.

Quickly rubbing his face, he dropped his legs back over the edge of the cot and leaned over to check 4S' readout. "What've you been analyzing, anyway?"

"It's a log of all mission-related communications from the Commander. I compiled it from the data you pulled in the network."

9S frowned. "You're supposed to be focusing on repairs. I told you, you don't have to help Jackass."

"Good thing I took your advice then, isn't it? I'm looking for stuff to help 11S." 4S grinned and lifted his head in a decidedly self-satisfied way. "And I think I found something."

"You…" A flutter passed through 9S' chest. "You did?"

"Yup! Executioner mission went down in this area, supposedly to eliminate a scanner given the dreaded B.R.R. stamp."

"Beyond reasonable repair…" 9S mumbled. "You think they might have stuff 11S can use?"

4S slid down from his cot. He still had a limp—the sub-processors in his right leg weren't cooperating with the restoration process and the leg's reaction time lagged just enough to give him trouble. "All they have to do is not be broken in the same ways he is. It's worth a shot."

"Wait, you're not going now, are you? Alone?"

"No way, you're coming with me."

"What?"

"What do you mean 'what'? I can barely walk. Are you really going to let a lone damaged ally wander off into the desert by himself in a time when YoRHa is feared and hated? Leave me, a scanner who can't scan or fight to go it alone?"

9S blinked, his mind already shooting off in a dozen different directions and converging on a single bit of aural data among 4S' theatrics. The desert. 4S wanted to go to the desert. Maybe he'd be able to find something, figure out what had happened to V and where he'd gone—

"You can't wander anyplace," Iota scolded. "You're in no condition to be exposed to sand."

"You're absolutely right," 4S said sweetly. "You should come too. That way we can make sure we get in, assess viable parts, and get out. It'll go nice and quick."

9S hopped down from his cot, straightened his jacket, and tightened control on his motor control until he was positive he wasn't shaking with either his anticipation or the effort of keeping the lid on it.

"Don't bother telling him no, Iota." He gave a long-suffering smile that he hoped wasn't too exaggerated. "He's made his plans and he'll go through with them with or without us. He's always been like that."

Iota crossed her arms, clearly unimpressed with the explanation. "So he is what's called a brat?"

4S answered with a loud, lively, and unoffended laugh. "Maybe so! But if it was your ass on the cot, wouldn't you want someone to get a little bratty about repairing you?"

Iota looked severely at 9S, at one admonishing him for not being stricter and warning him that this was a bad idea. But he just shrugged and offered a crooked smile. "Theta was just saying I should find a way to get out of camp for a while. I'm sure she won't mind both of us leaving as long as we're supervised. She knows I won't run off without 4S."

"And you know I'll be back for 11S," 4S beamed helpfully.

Iota threw her hands up. "You both know I don't make the decisions about this, so I think you're misunderstanding who you need to be talking to. Go talk to the Commander, and I'll get my gear together." 9S immediately dashed off to find Theta, but Iota's voice followed after him "If either of you get damaged out there, I'm going to double the cost of your repairs for ignoring me!"

9S yelled back without remembering to modulate the current eagerness out of his voice. "Yeah, yeah!"

* * *

**A/N, since it's on the more obscure side and won't be explained in future chapters:**

** The woman's intuition bit is a reference to Attacker No.4, who was in the same squad as A2. Her number was assigned to be Scanner Only after that mission, hence 4S. She had a false memory of being a high school girl and I like to think little odds and ends of that old personality are just kinda baked in there regardless of the change in model type. **


	57. Hyperphagia

Of the number of dunes V had climbed thus far, he no longer had an accurate count, but he was keenly aware this was the fourth on which he'd stumbled. He was halfway down the slope before Fern arrested his fall. Normally he would brush her away, but he had neither the strength nor the energy to do more than sag in her grip and stare dully at the sky.

A mess of unpleasant textures mingled in unpleasant ways beneath the translucent film his shirt had become, slimy sweat and moist grit battling against the baking heat for which could annoy him most. Shadow would have made this a significantly simpler journey, but despite a deep and restful sleep, the color of his markings remained faded, and she remained slow to answer his call. Best to conserve he strength if he could.

Griffon had not answered him at all.

"You're sure we're headed in the right direction."

"Yeah. It's really distinct after spending so much time near you." She hoisted him back to his feet, sparing him the fight against the shifting incline, and offered him water. When he waved it away, she gave a disapproving frown. "We'll be out here for another four hours at this pace. I have speed chips and auto-stabilizing legs. Please just let me carry you before you overheat."

V's mouth tugged to one side, but without the same vehemence as the last two times she'd made the proposal. Fern wasn't especially persuasive, but the desert was proving adept at making its point.

Soon they were moving again with him draped over her small but formidable back. She ran parallel with the mesa that separated the more expansive part of the desert from the ruined housing complex. The jostle as she climbed the hills was miserable, but the slides down were as smooth as riding Shadow.

He withdrew beneath the hood of his cloak and pretended that's what he was doing.

Since waking, he'd thought about the connection between the appearance of demons and his failed devil trigger. It had been brief. A misfire that was over before it made it past his forearms. There should not have been any way to open up a gate from that. More than the DT itself, he believed it had something to do with what had happened in the aftermath. The bite of cold cobblestones against his cheek, the sight of his spent and fragmented body healing itself right before his eyes. Cracks and crumbling pieces turning to cuts and bleeding wounds. It wasn't until he was passably human again that he rose to vomit salt and blood, and if there had to be one definitively strange thing among all the others since he arrived, that was the one he chose.

The basin did not think, so it did not care about what became of him once he left it. Maso itself might not think, but the gods did. They didn't care if he died in hell, but they were smart enough to know that while he walked this world, he needed to survive. Presumably, until he either passed through a portal or opened one large enough that he no longer mattered.

The interstitial period was likely what they needed. Too little maso and he wasn't human enough to carry them, too much and he was demonic enough to shrug them off.

In the end, it was just another self-styled deity seeking to make a marionette of him. Was that a petty comparison to draw? Perhaps and perhaps not, but he'd been denied the opportunity to express his more vindictive sentiments about his time as Nelo Angelo. As soon as the means were in his grasp, these would learn the same lesson Dante had taught the last. By his own hand, when he strangled the song from their throats.

The sunlight dimmed to a golden brown. The sandstorm was far off to the east, but the prevailing wind carried grit far enough to scour at his skin and darken the sky. The wind almost sounded like it was screaming.

Fern lurched to a stop. It wasn't the wind.

Blinking red lights appeared in the strange bronze haze. First a few, and then easily a dozen. V could just make out small square shapes like pods running toward them. Every single one raised an unending scream that sounded worryingly like android screams played through faulty speakers.

They skidded down the nearest dune and raced up the next. "Pod, a little help! I can't outrun them while I'm carrying V!"

"NEGATIVE. UNIT FERN DOES NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO COMMAND THIS POD. ADDITIONALLY, ATTACKING AT THIS RANGE—"

"Windmill."

The bomb program launched a volley of electromagnetic globes from Pod 042 with a deep, thunderous thrum. Explosive detonations raised the sound to a cacophony that soon outnumbered, drowned out, and then silenced the screams.

It worked a bit too well. Fern was launched over the top of the next dune and sent both V and the rest of her gear flying. Only Pod, tasked with carrying Humility, floated peacefully down with himself and his cargo undisturbed.

"—IS NOT RECOMMENDED DUE TO LARGE EXPLOSION RADIUS."

Fern swiped sand at the support unit, but it rolled ineffectually off his chassis.

V rubbed grit from his mouth and brushed it from his body with a short but lethargic sigh. From the top of the next dune, domes were visible in the near distance. He remembered seeing their silhouette before and not really giving them any more thought than fleeting curiosity. That was where they were going. The grumble beneath his ribs and buzzing that seemed to radiate from the sensitive nerves within his teeth all the way down his fingertips told him as much. Whatever was over there, it was something he could (_eat_) use.

When they arrived barely fifteen minutes later, the bizarre sight before his eyes dampened his eagerness. There were over a dozen of the domes, ranging from the size of a beachball to ominously towering spheres whose eyes were bigger than V was tall. They all had faces. Very familiar faces.

"Is this… Emil?"

"THESE ARE DEFUNCT COPIES OF THE ORIGINAL EMIL."

In brief, dead. In as much as a grinning stone head could be.

He strolled around the side of one of the largest. A machine wearing a mask brandished a spear at him, but Fern neatly threw one of her blades through its chest the moment its eyes shone red. He kept strolling. If the heads were like the Emil he knew of, they lacked memory of their lives. Yet something had called them to this spot. Most likely the same thing Fern sensed.

She yanked her sword from the machine's body and re-holstered it at her hip. An intense frown wrinkled her brow, and her weight shifted rapidly from leg to leg. V paid it no mind—until she took Humility from Pod.

"Something amiss?"

"I don't know." She looked around and rubbed at her shoulder despite nothing catching her eye. "I think they just creep me out. There's so many…"

"Focus. Do you still feel magic here?"

"Y-yeah. A lot of it." She tilted her head and passed between the heads until she was nearly at the center of them. "Below us, I think."

Not what V wanted to hear, as much as it made sense. If 9S found a gestalt-era home underground, there might be other things down there too. He experimentally ran his fingers along the baked stone and trailed around the curvature to follow her.

He looked up at Pod. "I don't suppose you have digging equipment."

"NEGATIVE."

A distracted hum answered. A gravesite, even one filled with grinning stone heads, was pedestrian for him, but goosebumps were rising all over his body. There was a strange sensation around them, but there was one from inside him as well. A twitch and slither just beneath his skin.

Tarry strips of his tattoos rose from his body without his command. They took no shape, instead moving in amorphous, twisting cords. They spattered and crept down his fingers to the stone dome, and V's spine let out a staccato of pops and cracks as he went rigid. The heads were dead but not spent. The magic was not of hell, but it sucked through the syrupy veins formed between his body and the (_food_) stone and filled him much the same as the red orbs had. Cracks formed in the grinning face, one after the other until it crumbled.

In the faint gust of the almost immaterial remains falling, V noted his hair blackening before his hooded eyes as the ink settled back against his skin. A thought of lunar tears bloomed bright in his mind but wilted just as quickly.

"Holy **SHIT**!"

The outburst earned a familiar smirk from V, and he raised his arm. "Well, well... Had enough lazing?"

Griffon perched on his arm with his wings stretched wide and his feathers in a bulging blue mass around his neck. "Lazing my ass! I told you that Umbran voodoo was nothin' to mess with and what happens? You almost die! Then for good measure, we make it back by some fuckin' miracle and you almost die _again!_"

V tilted his head away and scratched in the ear nearest Griffon's beak. "You're noisy."

"And you're a dumbass!"

The cane's handle waggled up just below Griffon's face, but for once V didn't go so far as to shove it in his familiar's beak. "What was that you just did?"

"It's this little thing called scolding, and you clearly didn't get enough of it as a kid."

V retracted his small show of grace with a twist of his wrist. "Try again."

"Agh aughay, oghay!" After V obligingly removed the cane, Griffon stretched his jaw and shuffled his wings down against his body. "Thing is, I'm not totally sure, but if I had to say it when you took your little soak in the basin you sort of… changed something."

"Helpful."

"I'm not great at the technical bits! Look, even nightmares like us could have survived in hell; trouble was we didn't really have a way back and you were human so you'd probably have gotten served to some demon on a gold tray if you went down there." He hooted with unusual energy, even for him. "Well, even in hell we wouldn't be able to kill anybody so we would've been in a tough position too. Point is, we got a nice drink in the basin but I think it did something to us—the _four_ of us."

V tapped his cane against his chin. The difference between energy in the basin and the ambient magic in the rest of hell was akin to the difference between a vat of boiling acid and a glass of orange juice. Coming back different wasn't surprising, but he hadn't exactly been afforded the time to think about anything but not freezing to death after his return.

"And now you find yourself hungry," he guessed.

"Starvin'! You know how maso feels after being in the basin? Like I've been drinkin' that Virility shit you found in Nico's truck for a year!" He took off and perched on the nearest medium-sized head. "Gathering magic that isn't from you seems to be a thing that's on the table now. By which I mean I really couldn't help myself once you started touching these things and it happened to work out that stuffing my face actually did something good for you."

V looked down at his fingers and slowly flexed them. Feeling the hunger of his familiars wasn't ideal, but it was a small price to pay if they could actually replace the magic they required. "What fails to kill us may prove its use. I'll consider it an upgrade to our contract."

Griffon dissolved with an animated cackle and V took a seat in the center of the gathered Emil heads. Black strands stretched from his skin like systems of sagging veins, attaching him to the inert sources of magic. The more of the magic siphoned through the connecting strings, the more V was inclined to agree with Griffon about the nature of maso.

It felt like oil sludging through him; thick, heavy, crude and nothing like the demonic energy that had restored him in the basin or the magic flowing through him now. The headiness of the power, not so different from when he first arrived, was no longer enough to cover the more nauseating aspects of its presence.

The remains of the second and third heads joined the sand. Again, he thought of lunar tears—a wreath of them carefully woven in a place where the grass was still green. He dismissed it and focused on what might lie below the sand. Whatever had drawn the heads to this place, he wanted.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noted Fern pacing a short, jerky line in the sand. Her head swiveled but never settled, the target of her tensions invisible but not beyond her other senses. She looked like an animal impotently stalking along a fence. The strands reached out for the fourth stone. One of the larger of its kind. Fern's head snapped toward it just as V felt his tattoos flinch away and whip back against his skin. Loose sand shifted and fell from the head. It rolled sluggishly and made a sound not unlike the whimper of a prematurely awakened infant.

Then it shrieked.

The sand kicked up around it, whirling into a vortex around the site of the fallen heads. Fern snatched V from where he stood and rounded the largest of them, a hand pressing to his chest and then his face in a frantic check for harm before an impact threw them both to the ground.

The living head was laughing as it bashed itself against its dead clones.

"What the hell is it doing?!" Fern shouted over the roar of the sand.

"EMIL IS A KNOWN MAGICAL WEAPON OF THE OLD WORLD," said Pod 042. "HYPOTHESIS: COMBINATION OF MEMORY LOSS DUE TO REPLICATION AND UNKNOWN PERIOD OF ACTIVE COMBAT HAS CAUSED SEVERE PSYCHOLOGICAL DETERIORATION."

Their refuge rumbled and rocked as the assault grew faster and more intense. They both scrambled to their feet and split up as their cover cracked and finally shuddered to rubble. V glanced back and his heart clenched. All he could make out was the grin and two glowing red points in the haze. The beams that issued would have shamed the machines. The air around them shuddered and the sand parted in towering columns. To make matters worse it rolled and spun seemingly at random, spraying beams and obscuring sand with no discernable pattern.

The only constant was the hysterical voice, vast yet still identifiable as belonging to a young boy. V was only able to cling to Griffon and listen to Emil's voice as his laughter broke down into raw, deafening wails and rose once more into screams.

The head rolled. V felt the beam before he could see it. Griffon wheeled. The sizzle of the beam passed like the buzz of a chainsaw, and V felt the talon dissolve from his hand. He whirled and reached out, but the blue core was already falling away from him. If it took another hit, V would lose Griffon.

Permanently this time.

Nightmare came at the snap of his fingers. At V's command, he gripped Emil, turned his beams down into the sand, and readied his own. But before he could fire, V's head swam. Nightmare rumbled feebly and began to lose his magic was draining away. There wasn't enough, not for Nightmare—his stomach was rumbling, he was so hungry. _They_ were so hungry.

It wasn't enough that V was being assaulted by a weeping child on the outside; this day could only be complete now that his familiars had made a nest of his body and squawked like unfed chicks inside him as well. He clicked his tongue and leaped from Nightmare's fading form, his cane piercing deep into the stone head. Ink spiraled down the length of it and threaded the surface as hungry roots.

_IT HURTS ETERNITY HURTS IT HURTS WHY US WHY ALONE WHY WON'T IT END WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO US WHY IT HURTS IT HURTS —_

Those thoughts were not V's. Nor was the pain branded itself deep in his gut and stole his breath away. Both belonged to an entity left alone to fight for so long that he no longer remembered anything else but his own desperation.

Fern leaped through the sandstorm with a war-like cry and drove Humility down into the stone right beside V's cane. Emil screamed and thrashed backward in a tantrum and began to spin in place, tossing Fern and nearly tossing V if not for Shadow tethering him down. The beams cut off, and in their place, hundreds of miniature heads launched up and began to rain from the sky.

The only thing available to V was Nelo Angelo's sword, glowing faintly blue and violet in his presence.

The light spread up his arm the moment his fingers touched it. He didn't know what power he called out to, but it was Shadow's roar that answered. She cloaked his body in her own, and in a dizzying collision of their senses, both her hunger and her power prowled sinuously under the controlling hand of his will. V felt himself split apart around the falling heads, amorphous and liquid and doggedly latching on not with fingers or his cane but with claws.

The pain was gone but the magic was fading fast. The burn of maso licked along the parts of his body that must have still been his own in this state. There was no time to think—only to push toward its logical conclusion. He bared teeth he knew were not his own, sprouted mouths too numerable to be his own. He was Shadow or Shadow was him and they were a single thing, but that thing was all mouths, all hungry lamprey teeth on tethers of ichor that bored into the stone beneath them.

It was a precarious balance. On one end, Shadow sank her fangs deep into the essence of the Emil head. The pain came with it, but she persisted, devouring what they could not hope to kill and fueling the trigger in the process. Elsewhere, the siren fire of the maso pushed to fill the gap between the amounts of power a devil trigger needed and the amount his body contained.

His mind wavered, consciousness threatened to fade at the sheer strain of it. The less he could hold against it, the more he felt the maso encroaching, firing through him like the revving of a distant engine.

Emil screamed and released a burst of energy that was too much for even Shadow to consume all at once. It burned her back, and in that moment of yield, the maso surged. He severed the connection between Shadow and himself and was immediately sent flying.

A pinching pressure filled the atmosphere, pushing against it like a membrane while he lay in wheezing in the sand. Maso thrummed through his body. He could feel thunder in the air. Smell the rot and blood stench of hell.

Fern blurred by him, both her remaining swords in hand. He saw her leap. Saw both the swords pierce dead center between Emil's eyes. V shielded his eyes from the eruption of harsh golden-white light that followed.

A final, weak sound that may have been a laugh or a sob vanished with the settling of the sand.

When V could finally look, there was nothing. Just the blue sky above and Fern draped over one of the actually-dead Emils like forgotten laundry below. He reached his senses out for the signs of hell's presence he'd felt only seconds before, but there were none. Everything was... alright.

His eyes snapped to his arms. Not everything. "Griffon...!"

The sand rumbled beneath his feet. Fern's head snapped up, but this was not a threat that could be fought. The sand was flowing down toward a growing indentation. The slopes of sand melded together into a single valley running directly through the center of the remaining heads.

"Pod_—_"

"WARNING: SUBSURFACE INSTABILITY DUE TO MULTIPLE HIGH-INTENSITY MAGICAL DISCHARGES. PROPOSAL: EVACUATE."

Fern slid carefully down the sucking sands, her hand extended. "Come on!"

"No." Shadow materialized at his side, her red eyes looking attentively to his. "You said that what we came here for was below us. That's where I will go. You will go with Shadow. Find Griffon, and bring him to me unharmed."

In a vast cloud of dust that gave the sky back its bronze, clouded hue, the earth gave way and the Emil heads sank with wordless grins. The valley split into a crack in the earth, and sand spilled down into its depths like waterfalls. V tucked his cane beneath his arm and held tight to Pod 042 as he hopped down. Beneath the top layers of sand and stone, the hole opened up into cavern walls lined with Emil heads. There were dozens or hundreds baked into thousands of years of sand and stone, staring out from the cavern's walls. Whatever was down here was much, much stronger than the Emil heads, living or dead. He could feel it growing thicker on the air as they descended.

The only heads at the bottom there were the ones that had fallen in with him, already half-buried by sand and by either other. A pile of funeral stones unto themselves.

As V had seen a nightmare for each familiar that carved itself onto his body, so too had he seen the frantic, jumbled remains of Emil's nightmares when they drank of his magic. Emil was powerful. Eternal. And alone. A boy for a mere ten years, a weapon for ten thousand. Aside from the Emil that called 9S friend, the only memory he had was the persistent ghost of a lunar tear whose meaning he did not even recall.

"_And alas I live to weep out mine eyes_," he whispered, pressing his hand against the nearest rictus grin. "_While Death sits laughing on their monuments…_"

Pod's light clicked on to reveal the cavern wasn't natural. It was the rotted remains of a building far more ancient and decrepit than any of those in the ruin. The rusted remains of iron gates were indented into the stone like fossils. There was an impression that there had once been wood, but it had long since rotted away and left only a hint of stonework. V stood well below these details with the remains of steel and cement beneath his feet. The sinkhole had opened up to a basement, perhaps. Or, by the remains of right-angles, into a tunnel.

Shadow's rumble echoed from above, and V looked up to see both his familiar and Fern in free-fall. She held a distinctive blue orb under one arm.

"_Sitzfleisch._"

The gravity field formed right beneath the hardening lines of Fern's shadow and she Fern fell right into it. V took the liberty of taking Griffon's core off her hands and re-absorbing Shadow. The program soon faded and Fern collided with the sand with a heavy thud.

"Ow…"

"You know," he said, clicking his cane down and watching her extract herself. "I would have sent Pod back up for you, had you been patient."

She stood and skidded clumsily down to him. There was a dark look in her eye, and she was shielding her midsection with one hand. The other was twitching at her empty hips, where she normally kept her weapons. Blood streaked down the back of her pants.

"You're injured."

Her expression flickered, limbs tightening. She swallowed. "That YoRHa kid was there…"

A bolt of tension tightened V's grip on his cane. "...And you fought him?"

"He didn't give me much choice. But I-I didn't hurt him," she added, eyes flicking to his as much to provide assurance as to seek approval. But just as quickly, she dropped her head. "He took the sword though."

"He's carried it before. He can be trusted with it." Provided his concern didn't cause him to rashly indulge his curiosity, of course. V took a deep breath that was nearly a gust in the echoing cavern. "I must keep moving. You can rest here."

"No!" She floundered toward him, and he couldn't tell if it was the Emil heads or the thought of him vanishing into the underground that made her eyes so wide and wild. "Please. I'm fine, so please…"

V shrugged, but let her stick much closer than he would have if not for the dark and the dubious stability of the stone beneath and above. The light from the surface grew dim and faded until there was no sign of light other than what Pod 042 provided. They crept cautiously around a listing slab and peered through the opening its fall created in the ceiling. V identified the remains of a foyer, complete with a chandelier still clinging on for dear life.

"A mansion…" V mused. "Pod, did we encounter data that matches this place?"

"SCANNING… REPORT: SNOW WHITE PROJECT RECORDS FROM 2026 DISCUSSED THE DISGUISING OF THE LABORATORY'S ABOVE GROUND FACILITY AS A MANSION. HYPOTHESIS: REMAINS OF FACILITY WHERE OLD WORLD MAGICAL WEAPONS EMIL AND HALUA WERE CREATED."

"So this is where they made those heads?" Fern asked, clutching at V's coat. "Is the real one down here? The first one?"

From beneath V's arm, a voice groaned. "Just the one was enough for me, thanks."

Fern started. "Griffon? Are you alright?"

V gripped his familiar's beak before either of them could make a conversation of it. "Quiet. I haven't come this far to die in a cave-in."

Fern clamped a hand over her mouth, and Griffon dissolved back into tattoos with only a thin, obligatory huff.

Whatever they were growing closer to took them through strange corridors with dozens of doorways both intact and not. Fern was able to guide them when the way was unclear, though he condition grew worse every time. There was a skittering around them in the dark at times. Nothing ever appeared.

After what felt like hours, they came upon a final door, not before them but below them. Built into the floor. Unlike so many others they'd encountered, this one withstood the test of time. Both it and the alloy walls around it.

Fern obligingly stomped at the solid metal. After three more, it had bend enough out of the way to reveal a stairwell leading into the dark. At the bottom was a small room, entirely empty save a single canister behind the remains of a shattered pane. A grimy keypad beside the enclosure suggested it must have been heavily secured at one time.

"Pod, a scan if you would."

Pod's antenna spun, and he floated a little closer. Then a little closer. Finding himself apparently stymied by whatever the canister was made of, he eventually flew directly to it and opened it.

V's hunger spiked as soon as the seal was broken. The tattoos squirmed and twitched and bubbled up from his skin. He cleared his throat noisily, and they snapped quickly back into place.

Pod returned with his digits pressed together, giving him the look of a mousy man come to announce a problem he did not feel qualified to be even tangentially involved with. "REPORT: ...BONE."

V stared beyond him at the canister without a word, so Fern asked the obvious. "Really? Just... a random bone?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

"How can a bone feel like that?" She sagged back against the wall and clutched her head. "Like my head's gonna split open..."

"Fern," V said firmly. "Go with Pod and wait at the top of the stairs."

"W-what...?"

"It's a strong source of magic, exactly as I wished." He pushed the cane below her chin until her eyes met his. "You've done well."

Her eyes watered. She blinked far too often like she was looking at something unbearably bright, but for once she did not avert her gaze. Her lips hung open, grasping for something to say, and finding nothing. How simple it was. 9S had similarly succumbed to sweet words but had at least put up the resistance of pointing out it was an unfair trick.

Even if he meant precisely what he said. "Upstairs," he repeated solemnly.

Pod drifted by, and Fern followed after him, hesitating only briefly to call back into the gloom. "Whatever happens I won't leave. Even if you don't come back for a whole month. I'll wait."

V stood alone in the pitch dark. He didn't need to see. The hunger of his familiars had truer aim truer than any arrow, and as his eyes adjusted to the murk, he noted a red aura in the dark with him. It was coming from the canister. And if Emil had been any indication, he would have to bear the burdens of that which his familiars consumed. Strange bones in the place where Emil was made that radiated power all the way to the desert surface; no doubt an unparalleled vision awaited him.

He let his cane fall and slouched down to the floor. Alone, in theory with the power he so desired, he allowed himself a moment to hesitate. His fingers trailed the curvature of his mother's bracelet at his wrist. The wrong wrist, he noted and swapped it from his left to his right with tired but tender attention.

It did not matter to him if it had power in it or not. His half of the perfect amulet was lost, and if by chance it was in Dante's possession, it would invariably go to Vergil. She had poured so much more than he ever understood into giving him the chance at humanity, and yet the pains of losing that life had seen him go to greater and greater lengths to shed it. V was the one who bore the weight that Vergil could not. He was the one who righted their wrongs and bowed his head for their sins.

Whatever happened, this memento would be his and his alone. As would her final words, so dolefully spoken though they were filled with menace.

_A mother does not ask gratitude of her children, so I ask only that you don't throw away your life. Should you return over-quick to this place, I will show you what an elevated craft the Inferno has made of Punishment._

Goosebumps rose on his skin and he laughed. Eva did not make idle threats. She surely wanted him to think of them the next time he did something to foolish...like devour strange bones found in ancient places. Truly, his mother was a woman who could make a demon think twice.

Alas, he was human, and he had hungry demons to feed.

"Go."

They nearly knocked the canister over in their greediness. The red aura vanished as they converged on the contents. He could almost feel the shape of it through them. Not a whole bone, but segments, as brittle as they were sharp. A red pulse appeared in the dark, trailing back toward him.

He wondered briefly if Urizen had felt this way, sitting in the heart of the Qliphoth with a dozen umbilical roots feeding concentrated blood into his body.

Then it reached him and he ignited, and wondered nothing at all.


	58. Bad Faith

At first, travelling in a group had been kind of fun. Though it was for different reasons, he and 4S were brimming with anticipation for what they might find. That energy relaxed their guardians, and soon they were all chatting away about nothing like neighbors who hadn't had an opportunity to catch up in a while.

Now it was all 9S could do to stare at the sun and silently beg it to overheat him.

When Theta specified that a combat-proficient resistance android had to accompany them, 9S had expected someone more aggressive would be assigned. Instead they got Gladiolus, a reasonable, practical choice with a rifle specialization and a compact but stocky build. Their rocky first meeting was apologized for and forgiven in a brief and awkward exchange and that was it. She had no hostility to spare for him, and she took to 4S with surprising kindness, going so far as to suggest carrying him once they reached the desert.

4S had always been good at endearing people to him, but the extent of her sympathy was a sharp contrast from what he'd gotten accustomed to. 9S had never thought about the kind of reputation he had among resistance androids. The ones who disliked him thought he was dangerous or that he knew something they didn't (he did, but that wasn't the point). He kept to himself, and few of them knew what he wanted or what he might do; and if he brought the Tower down, he could do anything, couldn't he?

There was no mystery like that in 4S. He found out about YoRHa's real purpose even later than the rest of them had, he was utterly defenseless, and his one singular concern in life was evident in everything he did. Maybe more importantly than all those things: he had no reason to be close-lipped with the Bunker gone. He was a bright and open room you could just walk into as you pleased, secure that there would be no unknowns or dangerous surprises hiding in the corner. Without duty or a command chain to reign him in, 4S was comfortable answering pretty much anything he was asked.

And Gladiolus had caught on and started asking.

"So you could bring them all back with just black boxes?"

"We'd need compatible bodies too. I could replace your fusion core with a black box and you'd have power but the neural mapping that your AI uses would make all the other functions pointless."

"It also requires the data on the ark copy to have been preserved in a really specific way," Iota huffed.

"Not specific," 4S corrected. "_Complete_. Especially the consciousness and personality data. Without consciousness data, memory integration won't happen and the short-term storage area will eventually overflow, which will go on to cause significant slow-down in processing eventually leading to a cessation of function. No personality data and you're basically creating a whole new android. They might have the same appearance, but the parameters for how they digest new memories, their emotional range, psychological baseline—it would be totally randomized."

"Is memory like a whole other thing? Or is it not important?"

"That's the one that's easiest to replace. It's not like we have memories of our own when we roll out for the first time. You guys have false memories to compensate, but R&D phased that out with us. YoRHa had an orientation period instead, typically with a pair of Operators and a few others of their model type."

"I guess that's not much of a price to pay if you get to come back to life when you die."

"It's not like coming back to life," 4S said patiently. "If you reset memory data in a YoRHa android, there's a high probability they'll repeat certain actions because the base personality is always identical, but unique sets of environmental stressors produce unique permutations."

Gladiolus shifted 4S higher onto her back. "Can you say that again, but this time, remember I'm not an information officer?"

"Losing your most recent memories means losing the most recent version of yourself. You'll always get someone similar, but you can never get who you were at that exact moment back."

"…Must've been rough."

4S shrugged, but the animated energy had drained out of his voice and left a subdued husk behind. "Losing hours, or days, or sometimes weeks was something we all just accepted."

With the mood finally dampened beyond what strangers could be expected to push through, the conversation retreated, and the tension that had crept into 9S' back and shoulders sluggishly followed after it. As he'd predicted, 4S stubbornly clung to the possibility of bringing everyone back. He might not know how, but he would talk through it with every android in existence until something clicked if 9S didn't rein him in. Hopefully, an opportunity would arise soon, if only so he didn't have to suffer through any other iterations of that conversation.

He hadn't seen a single sign of V anywhere.

There was no mention of a second android from the victims or from any of the androids who combed the area afterward. Ideally, that meant he'd finished his business with the other android, but it still didn't make sense of his actions. A burst of the kind of electricity Griffon could generate would have been more than enough to put four androids out of commission without exposing himself. Or he could have just flown over them and avoided them altogether. Instead of preventing detection, he'd barged through and prevented pursuit.

All accounts said he was running, though not very fast. But why? None of the reports mentioned anything about him being chased—the next ones to arrive after him were all resistance members responding to the SOS. And why go to a place where he knew there would be androids to begin with?

"You think it's someone we know?"

9S didn't bother trying to smooth the furrows in his brow, but made a note to be more careful about his expression. 4S was also a scanner.

"I'm more worried about the weapon."

"I heard about it. Maybe it's some kind of ferro-fluid. Gravity attacks didn't develop in machines until the war had already been going on a long time. If viral infection was involved, it's possible the machines may have been in the process of evolving a new ability like that before the tower fell."

9S was busy looking out at the sandstorm. If V was still out here somewhere, hopefully he had enough water. "…Viral activity ceased when the network collapsed."

"All that means is infected units like me were cured. Damages sustained didn't repair themselves, so theoretically any attack programs left on a unit might still be intact."

That wouldn't be V, but 9S hadn't forgotten how strange the murder was. How unlike a YoRHa unit the details of the attacker sounded. "If it was a YoRHa that reached a severe infection stage and was damaged but still in a mobile state, that would explain a lot… Not sold on the ferro-fluid idea, though."

"What's your theory?"

"I'm not sure yet. But ferro-fluid in this zone would be such a pain. Atmospheric conditions are terrible for the longevity of an iron-based weapon unless they figured out some kind of anti-oxidizing treatment, which you'd think they would use on their bodies before anything else."

"Machine attitudes about wear and tear have always been negligent though. They rely on quantity. But I guess if they got to the point of magnetic control with the kind of precision presented in that attack; they could probably just dismantle us directly… Alright, how about this: it's a nanomachine complex suspended in some kind of conductive fluid that allows a swarm to be controlled."

Gladiolus leaned over to Iota. "You have any idea what the hell they're saying?"

"…I think if I answer that question it'll make you feel stupid."

"Thanks, that was an even worse answer than just saying 'yes'."

They passed through the opening in the eastern bluffs and walked along the pipeline to avoid the treacherous silkiness of the sand for as long as they could. As they grew closer to their destination, 9S grew quieter.

Mammoth Apartments was insular even among machine kind. Stubby-type machines played in the shade of the tilted buildings, their laughter funneled out by the concrete so that it reached them while they were still far out on the sands. Closer, a group of machines all decorated in approximately female fashions conducted a conversation that seemed to consist solely of complaints. Occasionally their heads would turn, their blank faces somehow full of disapproval, before they went back to complaining even louder. If they were hostile, they were fine with keeping to nasty gossip rather than attacks.

4S slid down from Gladiolus' back and checked his readouts. "There are no exact coordinates, so I guess this is the hard part. Can Pod 053 run a scan?"

"NEGATIVE. REMOTE IDENTIFICATION REQUIRES AN ACTIVE BLACK BOX SIGNAL."

Gladiolus eyed the thousands of shadowed doors and windows above them, winding into the sky like strange beehives. "You mind running a scan for the one that's on the loose?"

Pod did not respond until 9S gave her a permissive shrug. "SCANNING… NO BLACK BOX SIGNALS DETECTED IN LOCAL COMPLEX."

"Thanks. Keep us up on it if that changes." She relaxed with a sigh and a hand on her hip and leveled her gun over her shoulder. "Well that means we're safe, now what?"

"We search." Iota dropped into a squat, regarding the buildings with equal parts interest and annoyance. "Though I'm not feeling very excited at the prospect of wandering around out here all day just trying to find a body."

9S stared off down the row of buildings and let muscle memory take over. The first machine to show some sign of coordination between its thoughts and actions had led him and 2B through this complex. Somewhere deep inside the barren cluster of apartments, there was a hole where Adam and Eve had been born. But those weren't the memories 9S was following.

A resistance member requested a simple retrieval. Confidential chips with confidential intel, snatched by machines. Many chips were common between YoRHa and standard models, but not those. YoRHa only. The Commander even got in direct contact with local ground units about the disappearance of a unit with classified information.

She later specified that said unit had been killed by a machine lifeform, along with a nearby resistance member.

Their bodies weren't far from where 9S had last seen them. Just inside the crumbled corner of an empty apartment, where the sunlight bounced off the sand brightly enough that there were no shadows to hide what remained. The scanner's body was sprawled across the floor. His anti-magnetic skin had deteriorated quickly in the heat and hung off of his exposed plates and cables in shriveled strips. His chest plating had been left open and was barren of all chips, including what should have been the bright silver strip of his OS chip. Lubricant had seeped into the concrete and cooked without the bleaching effect of direct light, staining the dull stones a red so rich that it still looked wet.

Gladiolus entered first. She passed the black-clothed corpse by to kneel down in front of the brown hand reaching over the threshold of the next room. 9S averted his gaze while she pushed back the hood and raised the head. She strangled a noise deep in her chest, and the next thing he heard was a flat, tinny clinking as she yanked the tags from his neck. She sat her gun against the wall, but her hand did not leave it.

"How did you know to come here."

"I met both of them before." The scent of spilled oil roasting in the sun was still strong. It wasn't a cramped room, but it felt far too small to hold everything that had happened, was happening, and might happen inside. "He asked me to get some chips back from some machines for him. Turned out they were classified and he used them to illegally reboot YoRHa Unit 32S."

"Did you kill him?"

"No."

"Could you have warned him?"

He thought back to what he knew at that time. He would have laughed if he didn't think Gladiolus would shoot him on principle. Instead he stepped inside, rolled the scanner body onto its back, and clasped the hands together neatly over the abdomen. "I wasn't privileged to know about Executioners at the time."

Her shoulders bunched and quivered with enough muscle to snap his neck if she really wanted to. But she stayed in place, and she slowly let her hand fall away from her gun. Gladiolus, he decided, was probably a good person. The type who wasn't capable of lashing out at convenient targets, even when her anger was justified.

Better than him, in any case.

"I'm gonna step out with 4S," he said, managing to keep most of the emotion out of his voice. "Just to the playground, if you don't mind."

Gladiolus answered with only a numb nod. It was Iota who gladly shooed them out so she could get to work.

The pair sat on the derelict remains of the swings and watched the machines play in the sand, 4S sitting straight and still and 9S sagging heavily forward with his face in his hands. He was grateful it was 4S with him and not anyone else. The dense silence between them could have stretched on until the sun went out without getting awkward or uncomfortable.

He wished they had that kind of time.

"I wondered if any of you had ever been assigned E units, but I really didn't want confirmation."

"We all suspected something like that was happening."

"I didn't. Not to you guys too."

"There was a version of you once that did."

His certainty struck 9S like a stone. The envy he quietly harbored for 4S, so grounded by the existence of 11S, turned inward. It cannibalized on an unknown past version of himself. One who may have been born with all the same doubts and anxieties, but if 4S' words were anything to go by, had been able to take refuge somewhere. Among models in the same position whose relationship with him wasn't a paradox that was always solved with his death.

It was hard to keep his voice steady. "What do you know about me?"

A sigh answered him. A muffled curse followed, nearly lost in the hiss of the sand shifting against concrete and hollowed out vehicles. "Do you really want me to say?"

"Yes!" he cried, the swing rattling on its chains as he jumped from the seat. "The only alternative is for me to continue to have no idea! When did I first meet 2B? When did I learn to fight? Where did I even get this sword from?!"

The gold and black sword materialized in his hand just in time for him to fling it into the nearest dune. His fists shook, his breaths ragged and black box beeping frantically in his overheated chest.

"The versions of me that have died weren't me," he said thickly. "But I've got all these questions about myself that I can't answer because they're parts of those old lives. I don't need you to tell me accurately, I just need somebody to tell me _something_."

4S plucked slowly at the back of his head. 9S wasn't sure what he was doing until the visor slipped down and fell in his lap. He gave it a brief, dull stare, tossed it aside into the sand, and set his gaze on his feet.

"You don't remember Guadalcanal anymore," he began. "But you were active before it even happened. You don't remember 24S anymore, but he was at your first orientation."

"My… first," 9S said dazedly.

"You had to have two. I don't think 'your' generation of scanners noticed as much, but me and 1S and 11S? We remembered what you were like when you were rolled out the first time. From the beginning, you were always sort of a weird guy. Things hit you different. Harder than the rest of us, I guess. Maybe it's part of what makes you advanced because it's the one thing that didn't change. You always get emotional and make fast, stupid decisions about things that are important to you, and most of the time it works out because you're just that good.

So, when they told us some bullshit about your base personality being damaged in a hacking attempt during the assault on Tarawa…We took it at face value at the time. It sounded like something you would do, and you were still like that. But you came back _different_, 9S. And you came back paired up with 2B."

9S tried to swallow but his motor processor didn't respond. His balance gave out instead, and he flopped back onto the swings. They cried out pitifully under his dead weight. He wanted to cry out with them, to find someone he could ask what the very first 9S could possibly have done that was so catastrophic they had to alter his base personality. And what had they altered it _with._ His vision began to quake and distort. This wasn't the kind of news he needed to hear after finding out he'd merged with A2 and whoever else.

He consoled himself with a quick, dry mental incision. Whoever that first 9S was, he wasn't with 2B. So it didn't matter. (It did, it did matter, what had they _done_ to him)—but that panicking voice in his chest was small, easy to drown out.

"Thank you," he said, though he felt no relief at all.

"You could always look in the Commander's data for your kill orders."

"No. There's someone…I really want to hear that from. Even if it's only on the ark."

The chains squeaked as 4S paused. "…I hope you find her."

9S' chest fluttered, and he shrugged down into his coat. It was strange to feel embarrassment of all things now of all times, but it was a welcome change of pace. It gave him a moment of clarity. 4S had given him enough truth to make a decision about just how deep he wanted to dig into the history of his executions. It was only fair to return the favor.

He took a deep breath and laid out the rest of the truths about Project YoRHa. He'd said they were made to die, but not that the backdoor that destroyed them all was built into the plan from the outset. That their lives were on a timer that not even the Commander had known about. And that was so cruel and so inhumane that androids had create something with no humanity. Black boxes, made with machine cores, and YoRHa to house them.

"I… I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I didn't want to overwhelm you. If you bring everyone back, they have to know all of that, 4S. The whole world does. You can't do that to them."

"Are you kidding?" 4S shifted his jaw. His eyes had turned to steel, but they burned with rebellious fire. "I'll be honest, when you told me the body problem, I settled. I tried to think smaller. Just bring my friends back. But now? I'm bringing back _everyone_."

"What? No! They shouldn't have to deal with this!"

"They already did!" 4S snapped, with such righteous anger that 9S shrank away. "They died dealing with it without ever knowing it!"

"No one should have to _live_ with this. We hate machines, we're _programmed_ to hate machines. How do you think they're going to react when they find out they have the hearts of machines!"

"I don't know. And neither do you." He rose from the swings, his single fist tight at his side and his head held up high. "I can't live expecting the worst outcome to be the one that's true. For me, a lack of certainty is enough. They deserve a _choice_, 9S. They deserve to know the truth and decide what they'll do with it. That's what you gave me, and that's what I'm going to give everyone else."

"But the bodies—"

"I don't care. If I live for a thousand years and haven't found a clue, I'll spend the next thousand years continuing to search. Until my last breath."

The words were familiar to 9S, if not necessarily the scorching resolve behind them. 9S hated it. He hated how strong the echo of Beepy was in 4S. It was far too much hope with far too little promise, and he hated how much he wanted to believe in it.

"Don't you want 2B to live just once able to make her own decisions about you?" 4S asked gently.

9S frowned and jabbed 4S in the stomach. He meant well, so he left it at that. "Don't lecture me about 2B. I want to see her again, but…"

4S recovered and flicked his ear with surprising force. "Whatever you're about to say, shut up. You're an android and you're supposedly the best we ever made. Stop getting all worked up just because you can't get results from just hacking them once."

"Why do you keep lecturing me?!"

"Because I'm tired of you always looking like you're running out of time."

9S wisely kept his mouth shut. With 4S on the warpath, there really was nothing he could say that would get him the last word, even though he _was_ running out of time. He barely knew why anymore, only that it was a pervasive and constant dread at the back of his mind the longer he was away from V. It might have only been his protocols finally catching up with him, but it didn't feel that way.

But to have 2B back…

The sky flashed pink. They both looked up. Two thin, red beams shaved away a section of the cliffs that separated the complex from the rest of the desert.

"What the heck was that…?"

"DISTURBANCE IN NORTHEASTERN QUADRANT OF THE DESERT ZONE," said Pod 153. "ABNORMAL SANDSTORM ACTIVITY AND ENERGY SIGNATURES DETECTED."

Dizziness momentarily clouded 9S' mind with static. Only the heavy pit that formed in his stomach kept him in balance. Something was wrong. "Is Pod 042 out there?"

Pod 153 hesitated a moment, swiveling faintly in 4S' direction before turning back to 9S. "AFFIRMATIVE."

9S whirled and gripped 4S. "You need to get out of here."

Another thin beam sheared through the sky above them, this time fully collapsing a section of the mesa near where they'd entered. Gladiolus raced down with Iota, and the four of them watched the cloud of sand and debris rising in the distance from the edge of the complex.

9S pushed 4S into Gladiolus' arms. "Get him back to the camp!"

"Where the hell are you going?!"

"I have to go see where that's coming from!"

"Are you CRAZY?!"

9S hesitated. 4S was looking between him and the destruction in the distance with wide, frightened eyes. He opened a readout and quickly began to work.

"9S what the hell are you—"

He shushed them sharply, and the moment the bar on his screen filled, he materialized the first weapon that came up in his databank and pushed it into 4S' hands. "Here! I dropped my combat routines onto this along with a protocol that'll unlock your NFCS permissions. All you have to do is let your object materialization program run and it should self-activate."

"What the hell are you giving me a weapon for?!"

He grabbed 4S face, forcing them to meet eye to eye. "Because if I don't come back, you and 11S deserve a fighting chance to do what you said."

4S' mouth hung open, but he bobbed his head rapidly and closed his fist around the spear, clutching it tight against his chest.

Gladiolus grabbed 9S by the back of his coat. "Hold on just a-!"

Another beam rattled the cliffs and raised clouds of sand on the other side. 9S shed his coat in a single loose ducking motion and took off. Only distantly did he hear Iota shouting at Gladiolus not to fire on him.

He changed his chipset on the fly, until his speed had maximized and all he could hear was wind whistling in his ears and the rapid-fire stomps of his boots pounding atop the pipeline. Theta floated across his mind, but he was beyond worrying about her, or anything that wasn't getting to the source of those beams. The moment he crested the first dune on the other side of the cliffs he was very nearly sheared in half by them. He skidded out of the way, and followed their arc through the sky back through their wildly spinning source to the north. They cut off, and in their place we watched thousands of gray orbs discharge into the air in a fountain-like spray.

He could hear a loud voice screaming and sobbing—it sounded like Emil and filled 9S' mind fit to burst with a hundred questions that all funneled down the only two of any importance: What the hell was happening and was V safe?

As if answering him, a pop of light flashed from inside the vast and swirling cloud of sand that obscured his destination. Only moments later, a pillar of light erupted from inside, so bright that his visual field momentarily distorted with the intensity. The energy coming off of it must have been incredible. His nerve endings all tingled and a disturbance in his sensors caused his head to fill briefly with the scent of hot, rotted meat.

He stumbled and tripped at the top of a dune, sliding uncontrollably in the sand even as he cursed at himself. He was so close—!

Without warning, the valley he had fallen into sank, leaving his suspended in the middle of a massive slope. Just barely a hundred meters, the ground had out opened up and was swallowing the heads and everything else. 9S was left bracing himself against the wind and sand and calling out into the roar.

"V!" He stumbled, clutching at his shirt for lack of anything better to stabilize himself on. "**V!"**

He heard a familiar yowl. Shadow! Instantly he was on his feet, rushing toward the source of the sound. Through the bronze haze of the last of the falling sand, he saw red hair whipping in the wind and a familiar black coat around the figure of a woman. She held a broken standard issue YoRHa blade in one hand, and in the other an inky looking globe with a faint blue shine to it. Shadow was howling from somewhere deeper in the haze, guiding her somewhere.

She was staring right at him. She had heard him. Waited for him.

There was no sign of V or Pod 042, but that had to be her. The one who stalked him then kidnapped him and then left him alone in whatever condition made him run through the outpost, causing 9S whole worlds of trouble in the process.

"Where's V?" he called, prowling closer.

"He sent you away," she snarled, her eyes watching his with predatory focus. "So be a good boy and Go. _Away_**."**

She turned and ran after Shadow.

9S was immediately on her heels, teeth bared and Cruel Oath in hand. To be dismissed so casually; treated like he was not the one who belonged at V's side, who had cared for him all this time, who was still running himself fucking ragged so V could remain innocent and unknown, and this android who had disturbed the ruins' peace, murdered someone, brought so much attention to YoRHa, caused them to be separated and disturbed 2B's body-!

Cruel Oath struck her broken blade with vicious force and sent it pinwheeling out of her hand. She half-turned, eyes wild and filled with—with hate? _She_ had the audacity to show up and hate _him?_

"Fucking," she hissed, and skidded around, bringing her knee up and into his chin. "Stop!**_"_**

She didn't strike him a second time. She didn't have to. The impact had rattled his systems around. Aberrations chromatic and otherwise turned his visual field into confetti—all colors and patterns that had nothing to do with what the desert actually looked like, and for one awful moment his motor control locked up and he couldn't make his body respond.

He tilted his head up and saw her pick something up from the sand. Another sword?

No. _The_ sword. Humility.

Red alerts appeared in his vision. He knew he was moving, but he couldn't feel it. He wasn't thinking about moving. Only about the rush of boiling oil coursing through his body and rushing in his ears. His vision had compressed down to the coat around her waist and the sword in her hands and how V had told him—_commanded_ him—not to touch it and now it was in the hands of an android who didn't know him. From here to the park, how many kilometers was that? Who cared, even one was too many; she didn't get to touch that, she didn't get to carry that, she didn't get to DO THAT.

For a moment she looked up and wavered in the face of his approach and the bright red rage that fueled it. But she was quick to return it, lifting the sword and swinging in a vast, thrumming arc.

A shot cracked across the air.

Everything on the other android's face was replaced with confusion and pain. Lubricant ran down her side. In a moment of blind panic, the sword slipped from her hands so that she could hold on to the blue orb and shield it from further shots.

The unexpected clumsiness snapped 9S out of his rage. He had been willing to die if she came at him seriously and Humility proved just what a well swung demonic weapon could do. Dying in a stupid accident because she _dropped_ the weapon?

He folded his knees and collapsed onto his back in the sand. Humility sailed over him, ruffling his hair with its close passage. He heard a roar from Shadow, and when he sat up, both of them were gone.

Gladiolus stalked up next to him and offered him her hand. He stared up at her, and she flicked her fingers impatiently. "Your intuition was right, so we're gonna pretend I wasn't ready to shoot you. Come on."

He took her hand and stood, sparing a dour glare for the hole in the earth. If Shadow was there, V was alive at least. But he had no answers for any of what had occurred. Only that V had been here. That most likely, he was right at the bottom of that hole.

Just a jump away, but it might as well have been on Mars.

He stumbled to where Humility had sunk into the sand. He de-materialized it into white sparks and stored it safety among his most protected memory banks. The moment was over and his hyper-processing over, he leaned gratefully into Gladiolus' offered arm and they stumbled together back toward the camp.

He'd have to get his processors looked when they got back. He could still faintly smell rotten meat long after they had wandered out of that part of the desert.


	59. Esperandote

** _How many thousands of years of battle had there been? Not even the old ones knew. _ **

** _How many thousands of years would there be before the battle ended? None could answer such a question. Yet it had ended. In a single flash of light that scorched the world nearly clean. _ **

My wounds still hurt, but at least they're closed.

Pod's turned his light off to preserve power in case we're down here a long time. He can't replenish, not without sunlight. The design is smart but inconvenient given the circumstances. Yet he will stay without a word of protest or complaint.

I feel a little bad for using an EMP bomb on him when we met. I can protect V from anything, but I don't have whole encyclopedias inside of me to tell me how to care for humans. I know they need food and water because the animals do. I know shelters were important because they built so many. I know a lot about humans. I've learned everything I could about how they lived since I found V. But how to make them well when they're sick? What they can and can't eat? What conditions they can and can't bear? I need Pod for that.

I've gotten used to him now, but sometimes I still get a heavy feeling in my stomach and a pain at the back of my head when he comes too close. I wish I didn't. It's the same feeling I get when I'm near that kid.

Nothing has made me feel it as strongly as the body I found when I was searching the waterfall, though.

I clench my arms around myself and drive the memory away. I don't need to think about that. All I need to think about is following Pod's example. He stayed at the falls when I didn't, and V could have died. This time, I _will_ be patient.

To pass the time, so I tell myself stories of what will happen when V gets back. Oil and escaped lubricant stain my clothes. It's even gotten on his coat, so I'll need to find a place to wash them clean. I'm pretty sure all the bottles broke when I got tossed around by Emil, so I'll need to replace them.

I don't know what else he'll need after that, but I think of a hundred more ways I could be useful.

And I wait.

* * *

** _Humans came after the light faded and the wounds healed. Fast and fleeting and countless. Meager and wretched and cruel. How she despised humans._ **

There's a scraping in the dark.

My head rises but my body is frozen in place. I have no weapons. I don't think I could use them in such a tight, unstable place even if I did. Pod spins in the air and his light clicks on. I really wish he hadn't. I don't know how many hours it's been, but the overwhelming pressure from below is moving like an expanding bubble against my body. It rises toward the hallway while the cool beam of light goes unbroken by so much as a mote of dust.

The bubble bursts.

Tar rises in floating, viscous strands from the stairwell. The rest of V follows, so pale he is almost aglow in the middle of all the twisting ink and dancing shadows. I've never seen V crawl, but he drags himself up like a beast. His tattoos have come away from his skin and they float up from him and around him like kelp tethered to a pallid seabed.

Whether the motion I make is toward him or away, I'm not sure. Either way, it catches his attention. The tar swells toward me, and presses against my arms and face and body. I knew it wasn't really tar, and it feels nothing like tar. I can't describe it outside of the ways it refuses to be any of the things I would expect. It isn't warm or cold or solid or liquid, and more than physical disgust, its fear that makes me scream and slap the substance away.

It stops swaying. Without a sound, it settles back down against V's skin, and he falls forward, collapsing over my shoulder. It takes me a few moments to regain control of my motor functions, and even then I hesitate to touch him. It's only gingerly that I let him down onto his back.

My voice is only a squeak in the dark. "V…?"

His eyes move toward mine, but I don't recognize his expression. When he was dying of cold, he was like an animal backed into a corner. He lashed out at me with all his might but none of his precision or elegance. It wasn't fear in his eyes when I had to restrain him. He looked at me like I was an enemy and he was going to fight me until his dying breath.

This V is calm. _Too_ calm.

Above me, Pod speaks. "THIS IS TACTICAL SUPPORT UNIT POD 042 TO SUPPORT UNIT GRIFFON. REQUESTING REPORT."

Griffon emerges from along V's arms immediately. "How many times do I have to tell you I'm not a goddamn support unit!"

I grab his beak without thinking. He looks shocked, and I quickly press my finger to my lips and gesture up at the thousands of tons of earth that could collapse on us.

He shakes himself free and perches atop V's chest. "Yeah, yeah, noise-control. Got it."

"…So?" I prompt, when he doesn't say anything else. "Is V okay?"

"Of, for—_Yes_ he's fine. Does this idiot look dead to you? V's got a habit of biting off more than he can chew in case you haven't noticed by now. You know what would happen if I worried about him as much as you do? My entire ass would be gray."

"QUERY: WHAT IS THE STATUS OF UNIT GRIFFON?"

Griffon and I both give the Pod a confused look. Griffon recovers before I do, and his feathers puff out with pride. "Oh well thanks for asking, soda can, I've never felt better!"

"ACKNOWLEDGED. IF UNIT GRIFFON'S CONDITION IS SATISFACTORY, THEN SUBJECT V'S CONDITION IS STABLE. PROPOSAL: RETURN TO THE DESERT SURFACE."

It's a proposal I'm more than happy to take.

V can walk and is aware enough to guide himself through the collapsed areas, but I carry him as much as I can to keep our pace quick. He doesn't resist.

Griffon stays out with us this time, always just ahead of the reach of Pod's light, but shows no sign of worry at how docile V's become. I've never asked about Griffon or Shadow or their relationship with V. They do their best to ensure he doesn't die, so they aren't all that different from me. What business did I have prying? But Pod has shown again he knows more about V's care than I do, and this time it's not based on knowledge from his archive.

I find it a little frustrating. But I know Pod won't leave V, so I'll just rely on him as is.

Griffon's noisy laugh welcomes us back into the sunlight. He takes V from my arms and soars upward, and I'm left to frown at Pod 042. I know what's about to happen. For Pod to carry me such a long way up, I have to enter suspension mode.

I know it's necessary, but I always see terrible things the moment before my consciousness cuts off. The bodies of so many androids, stretching away before me into the dark.

I don't know their faces, but I know that I used to.

* * *

** _What one of them had the strength to stand against the glory of her soul? What creature so small could hold their head as proudly as she?_ **

We decide that the safest place for V is in the forest castle.

There's too much risk if we try to leave the desert on foot. Both V and I have been seen, so it's up to Griffon to fly him to safety. He takes V's cane in one claw and says it's not a problem. That he's flown V along that way before. I don't ask. I tug V's coat free from my hips. It's incriminating, but it's not my possession to dispose of so I dump the broken glass and sand from V's bag, stuff the coat inside, and give that to Griffon as well.

"Try to be helpful and now I'm a goddamn pack mule," he complains with a hefty sigh. "You takin' the long way around then, lady-bot?"

"Yeah. I'll meet you there."

I watch him go until I can't see his blue wings or V's shape anymore.

It's a long crossing of nearly the entire desert to reach the oil field on the southwest side. I don't want to run too fast in case it draws attention, so I pass hours trotting and sliding in the sand. At least it keeps the risk of overheating down.

The oil field is empty. No machines, no androids. Not living ones anyway. A dead YoRHa slumps over the top of the ledge overlooking the black lake. When I go up to investigate, I find a second one sprawled out between a palm tree and several supply boxes that unfortunately don't contain anything I can use. Raw materials, mostly. Their weapons are laying out useless and baking in the sun, but I can't take those either. If I'm going to pass through the outpost, a YoRHa blade is the last thing I want to carry.

I pick one up anyway, throw my hood back, and shear my hair off at the nape, carefully tossing it down into the deepest part of the lake. Someone shot me, so I have to assume a ranged unit saw me. 'Long red hair' is the kind of identifier that will get spread around if they have any reason to think I'm not dead at the bottom of that pit.

I drop back down and wade in. It's hot, in a way that might've been nice if I hadn't just spent hours running through the desert, but it's still oil, and spreads thick and slimy into my boots. Before Pod warned me that sudden heat could kill a human dying of cold, I'd wanted to warm V back up here. I'm glad we didn't. I'm sure he would've hated it the moment he came back to his senses.

"Pod you know that YoRHa boy really well, right? What's he trying to do?" The question is quick and vague. Even though I'm not asking V or technically asking about V, I feel like I'm prying where I shouldn't be. "I-I mean why isn't he with V right now?"

"UNIT 9S IS WORKING WITHIN THE RESISTANCE TO PREVENT SUBJECT V'S DISCOVERY AND POTENTIAL SUSPICION IN THE DEATH OF ARMY OF HUMANITY INFORMATION OFFICER RHO."

"…Is that who I killed?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

V said I endangered an armistice. Now I understand. That weapon I found in the ravine was a YoRHa weapon, so they think a YoRHa unit killed the officer. Resistance members come and go and die all the time, but an officer of the Army being killed after a cease-fire is cause for action. They must've suspected the kid and talked him into figuring out who did it.

Well, it's a misunderstanding that will have to wait.

I slick oil through my hair until it's more brown than red and smear it over the red stains on my clothes as well. If I'm dirty, I might get teased, but no one will scrutinize me too hard. When I pass through the outpost, I make an effort to look a little annoyed. Someone with a rough voice asks what the hell happened to me.

"Got spooked at the oil field," I say, sounding appropriately put out and whipping some oil off my hands. "Some YoRHa up there but they're already dead."

Two laughs answer. "Oh, those two! They've been dead for months; took too much E-drug and fought themselves to death out there!"

It's not a story that makes me feel good enough to laugh, so I click my teeth and grumble something about finding somewhere to clean off. They continue to amuse themselves at my expense, but I don't care. It's a little sad if anything.

The resistance took me in. I didn't remember myself, but a few of them remembered that I had been with them before all the chaos. They gave me somewhere to belong in a world where suddenly none of us belonged or had any real purpose.

Even if it's only for a little while, V is worth betraying that kindness. It was a nice display of humanity, but his is the real thing even when it's callous. That's worth more than anything else this world can offer me.

* * *

** _One. There had been one human to work his way into her grace. A merciless and dark-hearted man whose soul had perished with her own in the land of the gods._ **

V is walking along the rows of moldy books as though he's underwater. His condition hasn't changed, and his tattoos are still wafting off of him at the slightest disturbance. He's awake and aware to an extent, but he isn't himself.

The way I hold his hand (just in case he falls, the castle's very unstable) should bother him. The amount of effort I put in to make sure he eats and drinks should bother him. He bit me last time, after all. But nothing bothers this version of V. I've tried a lot of things. Some of which I hope he doesn't remember later and some of which I personally would like to forget I tried.

But at least I'm trying to do something about this situation, unlike a certain blue bird.

Griffon is hopping in senseless patterns on the ground floor of the library, whistling a complicated three-part harmony between all his beaks. It would be impressive if I hadn't heard it so often since yesterday. He's been very noisy since I caught up with them. About the only quiet I get is when occasionally leaves 'to see what the ravens are gossiping about'. He insists every time I ask that V is alright, so there's really no point in asking him again.

I ask Pod instead, but Pod immediately forward to the question to Griffon.

"He's fine, he's fine."

"SUBJECT V HAS NOT ENTERED A REST PERIOD IN APPROXIMATELY 30 HOURS."

"So?"

"ACCORDING TO THIS POD'S ARCHIVES AND SUBJECT V'S KNOWN PATTERNS, THIS IS ABNORMAL."

"Look at me." Griffon spreads his wings and struts in a small circle. "I'm in the best mood I've ever been in. I could wipe out every machine for a mile. Maybe even two! V's handling some demon business. Can't you both just take it easy and enjoy not having to worry about him doing something stupid for a few days?"

"REQUESTING CLARIFICATION OF 'DEMON BUSINESS'."

Griffon flutters up to us, perching on the remains of the railing. "It means boss man's picked up some pretty intense power, but if he's gonna get it under control he has to come to an agreement with the owner." He switches his perch to V's shoulders. "Trouble is, getting ye olde bonehead to speak clearly is kinda hard!"

"REPORT: DOUBT." Griffon's feathers rise at the accusation, but frankly, I feel the same. "BONES DO NOT POSSESS THE ABILITY TO VOCALIZE."

"Oooh, really wowing me with the facts there, tin man. No fuckin' shit _normal _bones can't talk! But those bones were packin' some major heat! Death ain't the biggest obstacle to having a little _tête-à-tête_ when you're a demon, and bonehead's got enough juice left to talk—staying on topic, well that's a whole other problem. Being dead a long time and wakin' up all of a sudden with a guy like V in your face? I'd be tilted too!"

Pod's antennae whirs. "DEMON BUSINESS. ACKNOWLEDGED."

Couldn't have said it better myself. I saw what happened when we were fighting in the desert. How V sort of _became_ Shadow. I understand now that the 'other' part of him is the same. He's also a demon, in a way I don't particularly understand or care about.

He'll always be human to me. That's the only part that matters.

Griffon leers at me. "Any more questions, lady-bot?"

Come to think of it, I do. "Will he have another one like you when he finally snaps out of this?"

"Hell no!" Griffon cackles. "You can't make a whole familiar out of two pieces of dried up bone! Even if he could, bonehead's got more power than V ever did."

"Then how is V supposed to get it to agree to anything?"

"He has to figure that out. He has before." Griffon takes off, whistling yet another impressive but grating harmony. "That's why he's the boss man."

* * *

** _Such crimes were committed on my flesh… Death spares me the indignity, yet here are you, to tell me they were indignities no less. What is it you seek? It cannot be to offer succor to mere bones._ **

The orange grove is empty. The fruit is rotted into the ground and fills the air with a sickly sweet odor and clouds of insects. I'm not sure what I was hoping for. The book Pod gave me did say the fruit doesn't grow at this time of year. Maybe I wanted flowers, but there are none of those either.

During the brief period when he was alone in the city, I followed V here a few times. He would spend hours here, long after he'd had his fill of oranges. I thought he must love them, so when he left I would stuff my pockets with them by the dozen and rush them back to my hideaway in the park. I wouldn't dare to eat them. It was enough that they were there, and their scent seeped into the stone and I could close my eyes and pretend to sit beside him in the grove.

It was the closest I thought I would get to him, at the time.

I press my face into the leaves. They have a similar smell to the fruit, a sharp and bright sscent that I know well. I snap a branch off before I return to the castle with the rest of what I've gathered.

Griffon's an eagle so I don't think he'll mind that I caught doves.

The place where I left V was in the courtyard. He seemed intrigued by something there earlier, but he isn't there now. He never really stays where I leave him. The place where he was so keenly staring at the ground might have been a fountain or something once, but it's just dirt and old stones now. There are a bunch of plants, though, with little pink berries. I pick a few just in case he likes them and try to figure out where he's has gotten to this time.

The towerfall makes it easy to get up high, but much harder to get into some of the more secluded areas of the castle. And I'm much heavier than V, so I can't exactly follow in his footsteps if he's gone to an unstable spot.

I catch a glimpse of him before too long. He's standing way up high on the ramparts over the throne room, staring to the north with a strange intensity. As I draw closer, a familiar pressure pushes against me like centrifugal force, ready to crush me against the nearest wall. The tattoos are floating up over the back collar of his shirt in a strange but symmetrical dance. He looks like he's growing wings.

"Seems bonehead has beef with the freaks in the church." That's Griffon's voice. It's hard for me to get closer, so I wait and listen. "So we might be looking at a cure."

I'm aware V is sort of on the bony side, but I didn't know he was sick.

"QUERY: WERE THE REMAINS THOSE OF THE 'RED DRAGON' IDENTIFIED IN THE RECORDS?"

"Ehhh, your guess is as good as mine. I'm not privy to every little thing they're saying, it's more like a feelin'. But they have dragons in hell too, big fuckers who serve strong demons. I couldn't tell ya what this one would see in V, but if he can convince them they've got a mutual enemy, that might be enough. Not like bonehead can get up and take 'em out without a conduit."

"REPORT: PROGRESS. HOWEVER, V'S PRIMARY GOAL REMAINS OUT OF REACH."

"You'd have to talk directly to him about that one, soda can. I go where V goes. I'd say a contract with the last known being who was able to cross dimensions _without_ passing through hell is probably a good start."

I stop breathing. I feel like I shouldn't hear this—I've never asked anything of V, not where he's going or how long he's been there, or anything he needs that he doesn't need from me. I don't want to know. I don't need to know anything.

I can believe anything I want as long as I don't know anything for certain.

"Hey!" I shout, interrupting them before they can say anything more. "What are you doing all the way up there?!"

I climb up to join them and chastise them both for letting V come so high even though I know that both could carry him.

V's head twitches as I shake the orange bough under Griffon's nose. The ink reaches from his back and steals it from my hands. There is no change in his expression, but it's the most specific reaction I've seen from him in days.

With tightness in my jaw and the crackling current moving under my ribs like live wire, I realize it isn't the oranges he favors so much.

* * *

** _So the gods and the fools who would defy them still exist. Then what remains of my power you claim shall abide with thee in peace. Let it not be said I left our final foe undefeated._ **

** _Now leave me, half-breed. I am awaited in oblivion._ **

V is finally sleeping. Shadow is curled around him, and all feels right even though I know something is strange and different.

His left arm has gone black and leathery. There is something on it like scales or ridges, rough to the touch as the bark of a tree. Thick claws tip his fingers, the same color as moose antlers and the tusks on the boars that roam the forest. Dull violet light weaves between them in symmetrical patterns that remind me a little of fish scales and a little of the ridges on the underside of his cane. His tattoos are still just barely visible if I squint.

He was himself for a moment after the pressure around him dispersed and his tattoos finally settled down. I could tell he was exhausted—it had been nearly three days and he couldn't manage more protest than a vaguely irritated expression as I rushed him to a shaded ledge near the throne room where I knew he could rest undisturbed.

The first thing he did was raise his new arm and examine it in silence. He covered his eyes with his new hand and started to laugh, but it was the most miserable sound I have ever heard. Luckily, it didn't last. The words were slurred by his exhaustion, but I swore I heard him say '_So now I am to be punished'. _After that, he fell asleep with a grimace on his lips.

I haven't left him since.

I don't know how long he'll sleep, but I know his sleep is deep. I can tell the slow and rhythmic rise and fall of his chest under my cheek. Every inhale and exhale and the beat of his heart is like a song in my ear. I'm an android. As long as I listen carefully, I can remember this sound as long as I live.

Where did he come from? What is he trying to do? Just how much of a demon is he? Those things are none of my business and none of my concern. He's a human and he needs me for what he needs me for. If he tells me I have done well, that's enough. If I kill for him, that's enough. If I die for him, that's enough.

I'm not stupid. I know he's going back to that kid. It's inevitable. They were together for a long time. But it's better to be disposed of in service to a human than to drift along in this world where androids have no reason to exist.

I think of the shack on the dock of the amusement park, and of V sitting at the table reading one of the books I've left out. Humans like to be warm, so I imagine a fire. Humans like music, but the only songs I know are from the jukebox back in camp, and I become absorbed in wondering which he'd like best while praying that he will sleep a long, long time.

I stare at the symbol that has appeared in V palm. It's something I know about V that 9S does not. Once V is gone, I can pretend 9S never sees it. If I never see them again, what is there to tell me otherwise?

I can tell myself whatever story I wish.

* * *

**A/N: Next chapter will be after Christmas on the 27th. **

**PS I drew an actual pact mark for V because why the hell not, but this site doesn't believe in external links and I don't want to change the story cover yet, so best I could do for y'all who have shown interest in story art was change my profile pic. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯**

**Speaking of which, I think we're past the part where it would spoil things now, so for the person who asked, a guide to the story cover, starting from the sword and moving clockwise: **

**Type 4O Sword, Lunar Tear, Bracelet of Time, Fern, V's detached tattoos, the data pillar inside the machine network, 4S, 11S, 9S holding Virtuous Contract, and V holding a black box with his spicy new left hand.**


	60. Heritage

A crudely painted symbol on the bottom of the scaffolding planks above welcomed 9S back to full consciousness. It was another of Iota's weird repair practices. She claimed it reduced disorientation if an identical object was present in the visual field when entering and exiting maintenance mode. 'An identical object' in her case meant scribbling a poorly stylized version of her own name wherever she was operating.

To her credit, it did kind of work, but it was hard to ignore Gamma standing over him with a gun.

"Do you still respond well to reason, Unit 9S?"

"You only ever ask me that when you've made it clear I really need to respond to reason."

"Theta has some questions about the materials you provided prior to your repairs. Your readings warranted a cautionary approach." Her mouth tilted into a slight frown. "This is only for you if it needs to be."

9S had come to like that Gamma was so predictably unwilling to be underprepared or taken by surprise. The uniformity of her thought process was comfortable and even easy to work with though he didn't care for her harsh methods and still thought of her as a glorified E unit. All he had to do was make himself harmless, and she would do the same. Too bad he couldn't afford to do that right now.

He had failed to think up a way to avoid providing Pod 153's record of the fight before he and Gladiolus made it back to camp. Nothing would be more suspicious than him refusing to provide such an obvious piece of evidence, and if nothing else it was a clear visual of their culprit. Trouble was, even a simple audiovisual log would not omit his search for V, or that it was the source of his and the other unit's confrontation. So he just gave it to them. The wholesale pod record, biostatistics and all.

Now that Theta had seen it, there was a possibility he might need to grab Humility and run out of here. Helplessness was the enemy. Rather than turn off even a single one of his functions, he let Gamma march him across the camp. The stares didn't bother him. The sneers barely registered. What made his body grow tight and the pulse of his black box waver was that he was not being guided to the command tent, but to the small, private room near the entrance of the camp. By the time Gamma opened the door and gestured for him to go in, he had coiled in on himself, mentally and physically preparing for anything.

Theta was seated comfortably on the empty frame he had taken the mattress from, turning Virtuous Contract over in her hands like it was some knick-knack from the commercial facility that had caught her eye. She had to know the effect it would have on him if he caught her touching it so casually. He quelled the urge to attack, crushing it down to a hardened knot in his gut, and remained stone still as the door closed against his back.

"Your cooperation is appreciated as always," she said, without bothering to look up from the sword.

"You never really give me much choice."

Her motions paused and her eyes flicked across the room. If she had a retort, she didn't let it steal her focus. "So, who is V?"

"He's an old-world weapon like Emil." He knew that was coming. As much as he knew V wouldn't like it, bringing Humility back and letting Pine examine it paved the way for an easy to believe and hard to disprove half-truth. "The sword I brought back belongs to him."

A faint but pleased smile softened Theta's features. She looked like an instructor whose student had finally worked out the most precise way to solve a problem. "A technically correct answer to my question, without actually answering the implied question. I'd say that counts as a lie. I'm glad to see you took my advice to heart."

"All you asked was who he was, Theta. That's the question I answered."

"Playing dumb doesn't suit a model of your quality, YoRHa Unit 9S."

His jaw clicked as he resisted the urge to clench. First, she was weirdly proud of him for lying and then mad at him for not volunteering more information than necessary. Playing dumb wasn't something he _liked_ doing. Why was she so hung up on this lying thing anyway?

"You have footage of a red-haired android with YoRHa issue clothing on her person and an item in her possession that matches the descriptions of the weapon that was used at the outpost. Shouldn't that be your main concern?"

"You have my full agreement that she is the culprit if the innocence of your compatriots still concerns you." She crossed her legs and sat Virtuous Contract over her knee, plinking at the steel with a single busy finger. "But I think we both know the conversation you had with her, brief and violent as it was, communicated some interesting information that such a simple deflection isn't going to distract me from. It sounded like you both have an equal allegiance to this V and you were…what?" She tilted her head. "Discarded?"

Steady breaths. Still body. Steady breaths. Still body. Keeping those two simple commands at the top of the priority order was a strain he could not believe. His fists had been clenched from the moment he entered, and he let them tighten until the joints began to ache. His memory of the ferris wheel played over and over in a tilt-a-whirl loop. He hadn't been discarded, no matter what either of them said because V told him that wasn't the case. It was to keep him safe. They were keeping one another safe.

Theta was only trying to rattle him.

"Who is V," she asked again. "That you would run toward a dangerous, high-energy laser while simultaneously running away from a resistance member authorized to use lethal force on you?"

"A friend. No different than 4S and 11S."

"Ah well," she said in an exasperated voice. "That does explain nearly everything."

His voice came out a low waver, not what he wanted or expected but it was too late to take it back. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means I've had two weeks to observe you and the closest I've seen you come to make a proactive decision purely for personal gain was when you were going to go out bring us the culprit's head for disturbing your partner's body." The blade reflected her eyes as she turned it in her lap. They were as mirthless and flat as ever. "You aren't cooperating with Jackass for your own sake. You aren't here for your own sake. I'm beginning to believe that even the fruits of all your fascinating research these past months are also a mere byproduct of you throwing yourself into danger for the sake of this 'V'."

"That's what you're focusing on?" Incredulous laughter heaved in his chest but didn't quite make it out. "You're drilling me for _caring_ about other people?"

The plinking stopped. The blade reflected her eyes as she turned it. They were as mirthless and flat as ever. "I'm drilling you because you are passive, reckless, and extremely easy to manipulate. You wrap your existence up in that of those you want to protect, and it's going to get you killed."

The room was suddenly far too small. No room for maneuverability. No room for the more complicated parts of his sword or spear combat routines. He never used bracers; might have to reconsider that if he survived this. "By you?"

"Please, just once, think before you speak." The tired edge to her reproach sounded so much like 21O he almost thought it was intentional. "If I wanted you disposed of, I would not have gone through so much trouble to get you where I could keep an eye on you."

"Keep an... eye on me?" The pitch of his voice rose. His breaths began to hitch and heave in uneven rhythms as his stomach fluttered like a frightened dove. "Why?! That can't be all you wanted this whole time!"

Theta shot him a look that gripped some base part of his programming and ruthlessly dammed the rising torrent inside of him. "Are you afraid of me, Unit 9S?"

"You corner me and push my buttons at literally every opportunity. You're doing it right now."

Without realizing it, he stood stiffly to attention as she drew up to her full height. Virtuous Contract flipped in her fingers, the hilt out to him and the point directed dead center at her waist. All he had to do was grab the sword and push and she'd be bleeding out on the floor before Gamma could open the door. Her voice drifted down from above his head

"I cannot be asked to believe you came to a decision about my motives because I am not _nice_ to you. Have I ever actually said anything to you to give you the impression I was a danger to you?"

He pushed back against the door. "You held 11S over me."

"I told you to think about what Jackass would do to him if you didn't intervene because you specified personal matters to be of importance to you."

There was a crunch as his fingers dug into the wood. "You threatened me when I tried to leave."

"I made you aware of the law, Unit 9S. The one I am required to uphold as a Commander in the Army of Humanity."

His thoughts slowed and jumbled. Different memories replayed almost on top of one another. Despite being cold and intimidating and seeming to enjoy keeping him off-center, had she really not done anything to him?

"You… You and Jackass..."

"Are at odds because of you? That's correct. It became very clear from the moment we met that our objectives and approaches to getting what we want would be mutually exclusive. We cannot co-exist. That does not mean I intended to bring you to harm any more than it meant she would bring you any good." She pushed in closer over him, the point of the blade dimpling her white coat and the hilt pressing on his black coat. He looked up to see if she realized what she was doing, and saw nothing given away in her eyes. She didn't need a visor to mask her emotions, assuming she had any at all. "Has Jackass been an ideal ally to you, YoRHa Unit 9S? Or has she merely been transparent about the things she is willing to do to achieve her goal, even when they would directly harm those you claim to care for so much?"

He swallowed, desperately trying to back out, create some distance so he wouldn't stab her if he twitched wrong. He wanted to say that Jackass didn't try to turn him against others, but wasn't it her biases that had made him so wary of Theta to begin with? Thinking of her actions from the position of a Commander...if her concern was to watch him, were they really so strange?

"How honest can you be with me?"

"Ah, progress." She backed off, dropping back into her barren seat with a dark-eyed and deeply unimpressed stare. "To keep it brief: that depends on you. I dislike politics, Unit 9S, but I am still beholden to them. You've attempted to engage me like a spy since the day we met and while I presume that is very much a part of your intel-gathering functionality, it's been a source of immense frustration to me."

"Because I was creating a chaotic situation for you..."

"Because you're terrible at it, yes." She gave him a slow and assessing look, top to bottom. "Now that I know you are acting exclusively for the benefit of others; I can say conclusively that your focus is far too narrow. 4S, 11S, and now this V, whoever or whatever he might be? You're going to get them killed as well."

9S' head snapped up. Theta was watching him with a thorough, slouching kind of boredom. As if his stronger reaction to the idea of deaths other than his own was just more proof toward her point atop of an already massive pile. But getting himself killed—that could happen in any number of ways. He could've gotten himself killed approaching the active Emil Heads or in Beepy's pit, or in any number of places. _Them_ dying suggested Theta meant something far beyond his own disregard for caution.

"By who?"

She turned the point of Virtuous Contract directly up. At the ceiling...?

No.

She was pointing at the stars.

"Formally," she began quietly. "I am here to oversee continued peaceful relations, as historically the time around the signing of a treaty is known for violence from sects who may not feel peace is a suitable solution. Informally, I'm certain the person or people Jackass is looking for are carefully scrutinizing my reports."

"Why you?"

"Because the orbital base I come from is one of the closest to this area."

So now she was imitating him—answering in the technical, instead of the underlying question. Fine, he'd earned that one. "You have the face of someone who knew Emil and the Replicant of the Original. Does that tie into the reason you specifically are here?"

"Not for the reasons you may hope." Theta leaned back, sat Virtuous Contract gently aside, and folded her hands across her lap. "Legacy Reclamation. I'm sure you've come across that branch of the HHRMO in your hunt for data?"

A stranger answer might not have been possible. "Are you trying to tell me you're a historian?"

For the first time, a small and genuine smile graced her face. She actually _laughed_. "Not inaccurate, I suppose. I'm modeled after a genetic experiment—a human but also the inheritor of a battle program based on a soldier named Kaali who defeated the first Red-Eye. Her data became the basis for many early battle-type androids. This appearance is a matter of honor. A badge signifying that I've inherited the long history of android-kind and their responsibility to humanity."

"So the reason you came was…my reports?"

"I came because I was chosen. My model type, proximity, and your reports would have all been factors. Certainly, I required the least amount of catching up. I was already privy to most details of the gestalt project, and a great deal of the aftermath. You went beyond my knowledge base when you discovered Beepy and the home of the Original."

"…Did you already know humans were dead?"

"I wanted to believe otherwise, Unit 9S. So I did." She shrugged. "It's that simple."

9S sank into a squat. That was such a mundane answer. Everything about her was mundane. He rubbed at his face. "What the hell am I supposed to do with this information?"

"You're the scanner. If you're going to bother with living, think about the future a little more. All I've done is to make you aware of the situation you are in, YoRHa Unit 9S. Whatever you do, you shouldn't assume it'll align with my goals. You shouldn't assume it will align with _anyone's_ goals, including those of your friends."

She rose, straightened her coat and offered him her hand. "Now. Jackass returned while you were undergoing maintenance. She and 4S are waiting for you at the alloy site. Are you going to join them?"

9S stared at it, his processors chugging as though they were filled with mud. Everything she told him, all of her actions thus far—none of it aligned if she wanted to bring him any harm. But it did imply that a decision from him was necessary. Theta didn't even really care who V was, just that he was yet another person 9S was twisting himself in knots for. But there was no decision to make. They had all been made months ago as far as 9S was concerned.

He was happy that other scanners would live after him. Happy that 4S had the fortitude to spend the rest of his existence chasing a way to undo what had been done to all of them. Maybe he'd do it—but 9S' plans hadn't changed. The only thing he wanted was to find the scraps of 2B's data in the network, see 11S complete his repairs, and get back to V. If he could hold on to the few good things he had left, that was enough. He didn't need anything else. He wasn't expecting anything else.

He took Theta's hand and wrenched himself back to his feet. "I'll keep going."

"I see."

"But I want more data. You've convinced me I'm shit at command-tier politics. It's fine. That's not the kind of analysis I was built for. Can you give me anything else?"

A spark of approval passed lightning-quick through Theta's eyes.

* * *

_'You' are an android somewhere in the upper echelon of the Army of Humanity._

_You might be a commander, or maybe you're a director of R&D. Maybe you are so old you were there to see the Army of Humanity founded in 5013, or maybe you're one of the younger kind of 'old guard' who survived the first rising of Atlantis. The specifics don't matter, not yet. The point is that you have a substantial amount of power within the organization. Enough to manage or have managed on your behalf all the practical, logistical, and deeply boring bureaucratic aspects of bringing Project YoRHa into fruition._

_You, or someone who works for you, have the funds arranged. You, or someone who works for you, have the necessary construction completed, the clearances created, the penalties enforced._

_You share select details with a select few. It's a necessity. YoRHa is largely self-operating, but it does require certain touches. A Commander. Starting staff. Repairs and R&D. YoRHa models still need perfecting, and even if their construction facility is automated and unmanned someone has to know their structure in order to alter the blueprints that feed the machines. Few, if any, understand the full scope. They are all androids, accustomed to not knowing the full design of a plan and obeying orders._

_Somewhere in the background, the entire time is 'You'._

_Things proceed smoothly. The lie spreads. The 'Council of Humanity' becomes its own military entity, and YoRHa its active force, recognized as equals by the other bases and by the few Resistance ground forces who have been lucky enough to receive their assistance._

_Near the very end of the Project, just before you are clear and the data is all scrubbed out of existence, something goes wrong. The details of the project are recovered in the fallout by a resistance intel officer with an axe to grind and minimal moral qualms. She publicly vows to find you, and those in your cohort._

_You pay her no mind because she is one android built who knows how long ago, and she has no hope of reaching you. YoRHa is not a sympathetic entity. They are monsters made of dead machines wearing the skin of androids, and they served no purpose but to give androids false hope and propel them toward their collective deaths for however long it took. _

_All is silent, for about a month, before it comes to light that a single YoRHa has survived. To be precise, he is YoRHa Unit 9S—the most advanced scanner model ever produced. For reasons that are unclear to you, he is prying into the far, far past. Digging up artifacts long since lost to android-kind. This makes him of interest to the Legacy Reclamation branch, which is not ideal._

_However, you are more concerned with the chaos breaking out in the ranks below you. Thousands of abruptly disillusioned androids have internalized that it was a mere accident of circumstance that the war ended with the destruction of YoRHa. Their anger has created a storm that could lead to another rebel conflict. One that promises to be bloody because the goal will not be freedom, but revenge._

_A peace treaty with the remaining machines is exactly what the Army of Humanity needs, so it can address its internal problems. Enforce order. Your voice is almost certainly among those who come together on the subject when the known pacifist machine Pascal approaches the Resistance to request an armistice._

_You don't worry too much about 9S, as you hear he wants nothing to do with the effort to identify you. But over a very brief period, this changes. Other scanners are identified, and Unit 9S begins to actively lend himself to identifying information from a perfect copy of the machine network that the shockingly tenacious intel officer has managed to dig up over the course of several months._

_The information he finds is not confidential. Very little can be confidential when someone like Jackass is involved. And like all information that isn't tightly contained, it spreads._

_With the fall of the bunker, there are only ten orbital satellites. Four of those are satellite laser cannons run on protocols and algorithms and manned only by maintenance crews, which means you are on one of the remaining six._

_On all six of the bases, this intel officer and this YoRHa have created an unpleasant situation for you. Whether it is because they want you to stand trial for your crimes, or because they want to see you burned at the stake as humans once burned their witches, there is a buzz around your identity that was not there before. The activity of unit 9S is slowly turning what was once impossibility into an eventuality._

_He is a problem for you. He is becoming more of a problem for you by the day. _

_If this continues, 'You' will need to destroy him by whatever means are available to you._

* * *

The heavy picture of what is happening so far above him weighs on 9S as he stares into the white maze of the network.

It's only Theta's understanding of what's going on; a picture painted specifically for him of a situation he would never have considered. It may be wrong, or another lie, but there are a half dozen little things that line up to create a vivid and terrifyingly tangible peek into what has been happening on the orbital bases while he's been concerning himself with V.

"Can you hear me?"

4S voice bounces on the empty air.

Rather than going back and forth trying to tweak an algorithm, he has opted to connect them via a physical cable between their access ports. It isn't enough to make him physically present in the network, but he can communicate and receive a live feed of basic audiovisual data from 9S. It's quite an accomplishment, but 9S finds neither his mood nor his curiosity perk up.

"I can hear you," he answers.

"Awesome. Closed local network established annnd… Wow, no kidding it's huge in there. Not to butt in on your whole best scanner thing, but I didn't get that dumb nickname from 42S for nothing. Give me a minute to try some things."

4S has his own reasons to be doing this. 9S has no right to tell him to stop, but this has suddenly become far bigger than either of them. There is another war brewing, both physically and figuratively above their heads. 9S is not a commander. He is barely even a soldier anymore. What is he supposed to do against a threat that big? Is there even anyone he can talk to about this—one who doesn't have their own motives?

"Hellooo, Earth to 9S?"

9S jumps. "Huh?"

"Geez, handle the hacking, let me worry about analysis, space case. I said Jackass wants you to run a scan like the one you did before but for incoming communications while you're just standing around."

"Oh. Okay."

The Commander and A2 are both where he left them, still and static. While Pod 153 scans the broken-down blocks of the Commander's data, 9S scans for any sign of 2B. If there has to be a reason he absolutely can't stop or some kind of hard decision that is only his own to propel him forward, it's her data. He would rather die than leave it in there with N2.

Whatever else may come of 4S' search for a way to restore YoRHa and Jackass' scouring for the one who created them, he has to find it. Even if it's only a shred of her.

"So this might be a little uncomfortable, but bear with me—"

Before he has the chance to ask what 4S means, 9S feels his body expanding outward. A sense of rapid acceleration overcomes him, and he totters on his unmoving feet until he falls to his hands and knees. They feel miles away from him, and the distance grows exponentially as the seconds pass.

He hits something. Not a physical something, but it's enough to finally stop the sickly sense that the world is breaking the sound barrier around him. He hangs suspended instead. Floating as if only faintly tethered to a physical body.

As suddenly as it began, he is snapped back into his own small body.

"9S?" 4S calls frantically. "Are you okay?!"

"No," he gurgles. He thinks he's going to vomit. "What the hell... was that?"

"Oh well, I figured the best way to quickly get in touch with other YoRHa units would be to establish a connection with another scanner but I didn't quite compensate for the fact that you're kind of acting as a host within the machine server right now or how stupidly massive it is, so when I attempted to identify a YoRHa address for you to contact, it may have unintentionally catapulted part of your consciousness data in the routing effort?"

"Are you telling me you just used my consciousness data as a packet for a goddamn _ping_ attempt?"

"Sorry, sorry! But you were successful!"

9S staggers back to his feet, fighting vertigo for every inch he gains. "Ugh… Who did we find…?"

"Ah, that… There's only one guy whose address I know well enough to try that with. I sent you the coordinate data. I'm going to help Jackass organize the Commander's data for a bit. I'll stay connected, so let me know when you get there."

To be left alone so suddenly is telling, but 9S doesn't bother trying to guess who it is. It doesn't matter. He and whoever else he can lead them to all dead YoRHa who were chewed up and swallowed by the virus and N2. Not knowing who might be alive is one thing, but knowing exactly who is dead…

9S finds he can't blame 4S for trying to put off the moment of truth just a few minutes longer.

At the designated coordinates, he finds a single scanner standing tense but bewildered in the middle of the path. When their eyes meet, his shoulders drop with relief. "I was wondering who'd be stupid enough to ping me in a place like this."

"It wasn't my idea," 9S says with a slow and creeping numbness at the edge of his voice. No wonder 4S didn't want to talk anymore. 1S is a little taller than 9S, and his hair is immaculate. He might be the most severe of the scanners from 4S' generation, and until then 9S had always found him somewhat unapproachable. But now he thinks of Guadalcanal. The first 9S could not have been much younger than him. "It was 4S. He's… he's with me."

1S doesn't frown. 9S recalls dimly that 1S never shows a sad face in front of his juniors. But his smile is bittersweet at best. "So he's in good condition… Thank goodness. Is 11S with you too?"

"Sort of..." It's surreal to actually speak to someone inside the network who is aware. He'd wondered if time flowed inside of this place at all, and 1S is quietly putting that question to rest. It's clear he's been worrying about the two scanners he was closest to this whole time. How long must seven months feel like in a place like this?

It is also clear he already knows why he's been in there and they haven't.

"4S," 9S calls. But 4S doesn't answer. "4S?"

"I can hear you…"

1S face warms and his head tilts up toward the disembodied sound of 4S' voice. "Are you taking good care of 11S?"

"Of course I am. I'm looking for a way to bring you all back. I promise I won't just leave you like this!"

1S looks back at 9S. The conversation exchanged through their eyes is quick but thorough and not fully intentional on 9S' part. Still, there's a consoling sort of gratitude to 1S' smile when it's over. It's the kind of smile that says 'thank you for putting up with my friend, even though they're an idiot'. "He's been putting you through a lot, I take it."

9S is quick to shake his head. "I have my own reasons to be here. I'm… I'm looking for 2B. Have you seen her?"

"Sorry, but…I don't think she's in here, 9S."

"She wouldn't have been here until recently," he says quickly. "Due to a synaptic alignment even some of her consciousness data merged with an old prototype unit named A2. I didn't think it was enough for her to move around in here, but that bit of fragmented data is here. It literally got up and…and walked away from me after I recovered it."

"And you want to find it?" 9S bristles. He can hear the question under the question: 'why do you want to find your executioner?' He opens his mouth, ready to defend her, but 1S is already moving on. "Well, the nature of your relationship with her was never my business and I'm not about to make it mine now. Come on. You can ask around with everyone else."

The platforms shift and the local area resolution alters, however its center is not on either of them. A port he 9S had not previously identified opens and a hidden path materializes, a stairwell going down to a small, empty platform. When they reach it, the scenery shifts again. The permeating silence of the network is blown away by the light babble of any number of feminine voices. He can't see all the YoRHa any more than he could see the individuals in Beepy's network, but hew knows by their voices that they are there. This part of the network looks different. It still resembles the larger network, but it's organized. Circular with hundreds of nodes.

It looks like the Bunker's server.

"A hidden sub-network…"

"3S made it for us. There's no reason to fight any of the machines but being out there alone is like wandering in the middle of nowhere. Or like being dead, I suppose. This is just a place for those of us who felt like the lives we had before mattered. Even though I guess…they really didn't."

9S stops cold on the path. "You already know?"

"A bunch of scanners left alone in a huge repository of data. What else did we have to do but read up?"

9S is still processing this information when another scanner bowls into him and tosses him up into the air like a sack. "Greenhorn, what the hell are you doing here!"

It's 42S. He's the only scanner with blonde hair and the only one with such a physical approach to greeting his peers. 9S can't remember the last time he saw him. Had he ever, in this lifetime? 32S follows, of course. They come as a pair whenever they're able. 3S appears standing back from them as always with a sleepy but vaguely concerned look on his face. Despite needing sleep less than ever, he looks exhausted.

It should make 9S happy, but all he feels is a pervading absence of belonging in spite of the familiar welcome. He had no hope for any of them. Even seeing them, he's not sure that feeling has changed.

"You should be standing here," 9S says, his eyes lowering. "Not me."

"No," 4S says firmly, despite a low, telltale quiver in his voice. "None of us should have to be standing there."

It comes as an uncomfortable revelation to 9S that for the first time he truly believes 4S is right.


	61. Danse Macabre

9S waits to hear back if anyone has seen the one small piece of 2B. It is the only thing he wants that the network can offer him. Waiting alone would be his preference, but with 4S tethered to him, he is forced to sit at the focal point of a growing ring of units while 4S speaks to 3S.

9S makes every attempt to let his mind wander away, but there's little place for it to go. Their conversation ebbs and flows on the edge of his hearing and he makes no effort to process any of it, but he doesn't have to. Without excessive stress to muddy the process, sub-routines take care of that for him. He picks at his projected clothes and rubs at his projected gloves and looks among the crowd for any sign that someone is trying to get his attention. There is no one yet. He must sit and endure.

3S is not merely the eldest scanner, he is the _first _scanner. The Bunker has always needed a server administrator, and it always had one in him from the moment it became operational. He bears unique distinctions from the rest of them as a result. He is one of the only YoRHa to have remained active from the bunker's start to its end and his memory is fully continuous for all of it. Until he fell to the virus, he had never been executed or destroyed in combat.

There is no one who can discuss the logistics of fully transferring the Ark's YoRHa population as well as he can. His points make the issue of the bodies the least of 4S' concerns. YoRHa data is mobile but transferring an entire framework over the signal Jackass modified will not work for everyone. It's a signal that relies on intact scanner hardware to even perceive. Unless 9S is going to sit and act as a physical connector for all of them (he immediately thinks he won't and is glad when 3S points out that the strain would fry his hardware before he made twenty-five transfers ) they will need a vast storage space like the kind H units boast.

"Are there any H units in here?" asks 4S.

"Just two." 3S' hands clasp tight between his knees. "They could fight off the virus best, but because they were always paired with groups of combat units…"

9S clutches the arms of his coat and imagines pulling hard enough to cocoon himself in leather and escape the awkward shuffles that surround him.

There are only 216 YoRHa inside the copy of the Ark. Two thirds their active force, and an even finer fraction when considering all the inactive units only kept in body storage. There is no way so many survived, so there is only the alternative for 9S to consider: They're dead. Not like the scanners around him, but in a final and unrecoverable way. N2 took many things from the Bunker's server, but she did not take base personalities or default versions of any of them. The YoRHa on the Ark copy are all those who fell victim to the virus and were completely consumed by it.

4S' voice drops to a pre-occupied muffle around 9S' head. He mutters like a witch over a cauldron, working out the details of an incantation that might be better left unspoken. Arranging it in steps that he can follow to make his wild dreams come true. Find bodies, bring back an H unit through 9S, have the H unit complete the rest of the transfers. Like it is as simple as following a manual.

It's 1S who speaks up to dampen that delusion. "4S do you have any idea how you're going to do any of this?"

"I'll keep asking around until I get answers," 4S answers confidently. "If Jackass is going to kill the one who made YoRHa anyway, I can work on extracting the data from them."

"You intend to impose on 9S for that long?"

The reproach catches 9S off-guard, but it blindsides 4S. "_Impose_? He has his own reasons to be in here!"

"Yeah, to find 2B. And once he does? Are you expecting him to stick around while you poke your nose into that kind of danger?"

"I agree," said 3S. "Your methods aren't that inefficient given the circumstance, but they're very loud and you have no leverage. If we're supposed to be dead, there's no reason the creator of YoRHa wouldn't just kill you and 9S too if you tried to confront them personally."

"So am I supposed to just let you all stay dead? For me that's like letting 11S stay broken, I—" His voice hitches and cracks. "I can't do that…!"

The other scanners shift uncomfortably, none more so than 9S. Emotion flows a little freer among them now that there's nothing to prohibit it, but the gap between anger and sorrow is immeasurable. To rage is expected. To cry exposes a rawness that 9S is not ready to see in other YoRHa and that they in kind are not ready to see in each other.

From somewhere among the small crowd, someone calls. "Let him do it, I don't wanna stay in here forever!"

"It's easy to shout that from the back to let someone who isn't important to you do something dangerous, isn't it?" 1S frigid words shame to silence the rising murmur of agreement. With that wall of cold between them, 1S turns his attention back to 4S. "This isn't how 24S taught us, 4S. Don't be careless. We have to act wisely and as a team. Nothing that can be done at all—"

"—Is out of reach if we make use of all our assets," 4S finishes with a modest sniffle.

"Stay calm, stay safe, and know your role." It is the often-exchanged mantra of the Guadalcanal era scanners.

32S raises his hand. 9S finds it hard to look at him after seeing a corpse of him so recently. "Are we...bringing back everyone?"

"Why wouldn't we?"

He makes a complicated face. "Executioners."

The air condenses around them and 9S can feel the ripples moving through it. Anger. Resentment. It is surprisingly 3S who offers pity in the form of a stony reprimand. "Do you think they had the luxury to not do as they were ordered?"

42S breaks the tension in the most obnoxious manner possible. With a sigh many decibels too loud and another one of his horrible nicknames, this time for 3S. "Crowd is right. We don't usually make our own roles, we just rolled with whatever we were told, you know? I don't want the start of my freelance life to be deciding somebody else should get punished for their programming."

"Glad to hear you actually say something sensible for once." 1S climbs to his feet and gestures quickly to the other scanners around him. "I propose ourt goal should be to eliminate any possibility the data we're looking for isn't already inside the network. I'm close with the Operators, so I'll take point interfacing with them. 42S, you do the same with the B and D units. 32S you're familiar with the units who don't stay in the sub-network, so go talk to them, but make sure you take someone with you. Any leads should be directed to speak with 3S."

"Hmm?" 3S looks up dreamily from beneath his curly bird's nest of hair. "Me? Why?"

"You're the server admin. You excel at managing large amounts of data without suffering from information overload. We can all analyze it together once we've lined up some possibilities. Ah, you should be the one to talk to the maintenance and repairs crew, though."

That is a job that should belong to 801S, but 9S doesn't say as much. None of the others have mentioned the youngest scanner. He has no intention of broaching the subject when there is such a conspicuous hole among them. There's no good news to hear there.

"9S?" 1S' uptight aura melts slightly. His smile is formal but filled with genuine gratitude. "Thanks for taking care of 4S and 11S."

"I'm surprised you don't have a job for me too." Small talk. He doesn't want one. Another thing to think about when there are so many would be too much even for him. "That was surprisingly efficient of you."

"The No.1 personality was designed to lead missions." He adds, calm and nonchalant: "And I'm the only one who took the time to become familiar with all of your specializations even before all of this happened. You'd be a great asset, but you weren't very talkative. 2B is the goal in front of you. Tasks done distracted and by half-measures won't help me keep 4S out of trouble."

It stings a little because 1S' blunt way with words always stings a little and because he is wrong. Waiting for word from 2B is simple. There would be a result or there wouldn't, and he would continue to search. It is watching an earnest, organized, and possibly even realistic effort by his fellow scanners to reclaim their lives that weighs on him. He has known all along that YoRHa would be a target. The scars from his time in the coliseum are gone, but the lesson imparted has never left him. But being targeted by someone as powerful as the person who made them is far different than being hated by resistance androids. Even with the report from Theta, 9S doesn't fully understand just how much of a reach they might have.

But if 1S is designed to lead, maybe he will be able to process it. Now that they have taken matters into their own hands, 9S feels he owes them all the information that he has.

"I received a predictive analysis from a command unit in the army of humanity today," he says, pulling 1S closer. "I was worried if I gave it to 4S he would just get more stubborn, but I think it'll be in good hands with you."

The data passes between them as a single white block floating across the ever-present connection of the network. 1S crosses an arm, a hand worrying at his chin as he scans the contents, and finally, he sighs. "That's exactly the kind of attention I was concerned about."

"They don't seem concerned about 4S or 11S," 9S offers as a small comfort. "Only me."

"It may be a good idea for you to consider the attention of Legacy Reclamation a positive. If you find any major artifacts, I'd suggest you hold onto it and use it as an advantage."

V's existence rises like bile through him. It is the greatest advantage he could have, but his life is not worth involving V in this. But it is no longer only his life that has to be placed on the scale. He doesn't want to make or acknowledge the unwritten decision, but the truth is evident. To keep V hidden and safe is to place all 216 of these lives below that of a human—and to have his protocols _reward_ him for it.

He swallows these things back down with care, but they leave a sourness in his heart that does not fade away.

* * *

The headache that followed the complicated process of hacking into the network copy had not spared 4S. Connecting to 9S with a physical cable didn't allow him much. He couldn't recognize the frequency or figure out a way to project himself as a physical object in the hacking space, but the moment they disconnected from each other, the pain set in on them both.

Icy conditions meant Jackass' truck wasn't active, so they'd had to slip and skid together all the way to the top of the crater, where 4S clenched his eyes shut.

"What?" asked 9S, squinting against the vicious points of light bouncing off the snow. "You gonna puke or something?"

A quick _shh!_ answered, and 4S rubbed his face with one hand. The other waved like the needle on a dial, eventually pointing off somewhere to his right. "Do you…hear that?"

"I don't hear anything," said Jackass. "You bust your aural processors in there?"

9S held up a hand. He didn't _hear_ it, exactly, but something was showing up on his graphs. With a bit of re-directed processing power, he was able to identify it.

"Someone crying," he guessed, cocking his head. "A _machine_ crying."

Jackass scoffed and kept going. It was no secret she still didn't care much for machines. Didn't go out of her way to attack them ever since the treaty, but what did she care if she heard one crying somewhere?

9S and 4S shared an uncomfortable look, and the latter trotted after Jackass. "I'm gonna go check on 11S..."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll go see what that is."

As he ran off, Jackass' voice called after him. "Remember not to do anything heroic!"

The closer he got the more clearly he could hear it, monotone and heavily modulated. It occurred to him in much the way a brick occurs to a window that Pascal might have new children. That he might be repeating the exact same things, and the children being children were wandering off and getting into the exact same kind of trouble. And here was 9S, again. Running to investigate and help in spite of knowing it had all been done before.

He rounded onto the empty road that led to the desert. The snow had been shuffled around by foot traffic, both machine and android, as well as a winding set of Emil's three-wheeled tire tracks. A small biped type machine was making an embarrassing attempt to push through it. Its low knees couldn't clear the hardened piles and it kept falling with every other step.

9S was relieved. It wasn't wearing any bows or clothes. Maybe it was just frustrated or lost.

Its eyes met his, blank and white and flickering. There was nothing to read on that spherical face, but the three-pronged hands reached out, clamping and opening at a pace that would have been menacing if it were so clearly not an act of panic.

_ "SCARY! BROKEN! HELP! HELP M—!" _

The cry cut off. Oil blackened the snow in a boiling splash.

The thing that stood over the corpse was perfectly articulated in 9S' visual field. He had no problem processing the shape, but steam rose in tendrils then in clouds from his collar as he struggled to process what exactly he was seeing.

It had four limbs like an animal, and something like a tail only it was growing from its back. All five of those parts ended in hands. Android hands, to be specific. Attached to android arms which were attached to a body of scrap and parts from machines with grinning half-broken android head crammed in. The arrangement was vile and inorganic and stirred in 9S an almost bestial feeling of hatred. It wasn't that this thing was a machine—he didn't think they had the imagination to make something so awful.

It was that it was so unforgivably_ inhuman._

With casual brutality, it yanked the head from the dead biped and carried it as it stomped toward him. A gurgling scream shot from its mouth.

9S moved as though underwater, terror and thoughts of self-defense both struggling against his curiosity and revulsion. When it scuttled close enough for him to see the strange black tongue lolling from the android head and the copious mucous weaving between its shoulders like wet webbing, he yelped, and Pod's laser shot out to push it back.

The snow had not cleared before it charged through, missing a limb and screaming in a voice that made 9S skin feel like it was retracting back from his exoskeleton. He lashed out with Cruel Oath and sent the android head spinning away.

With no pause, it crammed the machine head into the gaping hole, and three more android arms rose from its back. The fingertips glowed like molten metal and snatched for him. He dodged, but the impact cleared the snow in a cloud and left cracks in the ancient roadway.

Pod opened fire at his command. The thing did not flinch back. It leaped at Pod, catching her in its glowing hands before she could maneuver away. 9S switched weapons, and with a frantic howl and a swing of Iron Will, severed the multi-handed growth from the things back.

It lurched away, spilling viscous, oozing oil that 9S immediately knew was as cold as the winter air. It held up its hands and screeched as he followed, but Iron Will crushed them and it.

With a shaky breath, he let himself and the sword drop heavily into the snow. Pod 153 returned to his side as though nothing had happened, and he seized her out of the air and held her tight.

"QUERY: WHAT IS THE REASON FOR THIS DISPLAY?"

"It had you," he said, voice a fragile whisper against her cold casing. "I thought it…"

"…PROPOSAL: INVESTIGATE UNKNOWN ENEMY TYPE. UP-TO-DATE DATA WILL ALLOW FOR RISK MINIMIZATION."

He let her go and satisfied himself that the thing was dead with a few experimental kicks. The mucous and the black tongue had disappeared. All that was left behind were a handful of weird red crystals. He nearly dropped the one he picked up when he realized there was a screaming face carved into it. And there was a _stench_.

The boar V had killed when they met had quickly rotted down to brown, soupy meat and exposed bones in the constant late summer sun. The reek of it soiled even the freshest breeze for weeks after. On more humid days, passing by it was like swimming through a cloud of rancid fats and decayed proteins.

That was what he smelled now. He had smelled the same thing after that flash of light in the desert.

And when he left with Gladiolus.

It stayed right on the edge of his senses until he'd laid down for his repairs, in fact.

The world dimmed out as he tore back through his memory, scouring through his conversations with V. Then he found what he was looking for and he was up and running without even sparing the breath to swear.

Jackass and 4S weren't back to the camp yet. He snatched them both, and maybe there was panic in his eyes because both immediately made efforts to keep up with him. Only when he was within the bounds of the camp did he stop, his eyes darting wildly for signs. Of what he didn't know—more of the same creature maybe. Anything that didn't look _right_.

Beside him, Jackass cringed and raised an arm over her face. "The fuck is that smell?"

_Oh god._ "4S, get 11S and get behind closed doors."

A bewildered stare answered him. "What?"

"Just do it!"

"Is there a problem, Unit 9S?"

Gamma. He grabbed her hands and stared pleadingly into her face as though he could convey by pure telepathy what had happened. What was about to happen again if he was analyzing the situation right. "Something's coming. I don't know what—something came out of the desert with me and Gladiolus. It followed us; can't you _smell_ it?"

"What the fuck did you see out there?" Jackass demanded. "Are the machines fucking eating each other again?"

_Again? _No, there was no time for that. Whatever horror story that was had to wait until later. "The thing I saw out there was _not _a machine!"

A shot rang out.

Every head in the camp went up like prey hearing a warning call. 4S broke away from the group, darting toward the scaffolding and the helpless 11S. 9S stayed between Gamma and Jackass, his sensors all strained to their maximum sensitivity. Footsteps behind him. Two pairs. Steady, purposeful. Theta's voice inquired. Anemone's voice barked out.

"Perimeter report!"

It was Wormwood that appeared high in one of the ruined windows, rifle in hand. His mouth opened and one word issued in a distorted, static-filled growl that only long periods of vocal synthesizer neglect could produce.

"**YoRHa!**"

"NEGATIVE," Pod 153 countered. "NO YORHA BLACK BOX SIGNALS DETECTED."

Another shot rang out. Wormwood vanished back to his post. The diverging information of two units who would not lie in the situation left the camp momentarily suspended while the shots grew in frequency.

The first scream brought them all crashing back to earth.

Another of the same hideous amalgam crashed through one of the barren windows, the concrete crumbling under its weight. 9S charged with Iron Will at the ready, only to be bashed in the face with the full weight of an android's severed head.

For a moment he thought it caught him somehow. The huge hands at his back turned out to be Gamma's, setting him quickly but carefully on the ground. Through pulses of pain, he saw her move at a speed he would not have expected from a unit so big. She tackled it to the ground before it could throw anything else.

His mouth opened and closed with a warning he couldn't formulate. The slickness of oil coated his face and ran over his teeth like a liquid drip of the taste of dirt and ancient, rotted trees. Someone yanked him up and jammed something in his mouth and his senses balanced back out one after the other in quick succession.

"Eyes up!" Theta commanded with surprising force. "Ranged units off the ground, physical combat units on me and Anemone! Unit 9S, provide hacking support!"

The camp moved to the sound of Theta's voice, and 9S found he did as well. Gamma did not appear, but he did not have the opportunity to check that she had not been crushed.

The first YoRHa entered the camp.

Alarm bells went off in 9S' head. This thing wasn't wrong in the inhuman way that the amalgam was, but it wasn't a YoRHa unit. Maybe it had been once, but not anymore. It was still wearing what shreds and pieces of heavy armor had managed to cling to the body since the final descent, but the similarities ended there. It moved in a heavy swaying motion that no YoRHa would, and the weapon in its hands looked like a harvesting scythe that hadn't been used in a thousand years.

There was no light, neither green nor red, in its eyes, and aside from the _click-thud_ of its one-booted steps, it moved without a sound.

He tried to hack it anyway, just on the off chance—

_The hacking space is black, there is nothing in here but something is in the dark with me, and it is not a memory, it looks at me with dead eyes and knows I am not human but it comes anyway because my fear is human enough, it will bathe in my screams, in all of our screams _

9S snapped back into physical space with a choking gasp.

Theta stood over the freshly decapitated body. In each hand, she held tonfa as white as the blade of Virtuous Contract. They were sizzling faintly. His bleary eyes met hers, and she did not ask what he'd seen.

There was no time.

YoRHa galloped into the camp on broken bodies one after the other, each of them utterly silent and swinging that same crude weapon. One became a dozen became a swarm, the bullets of the ranged units only capable of taking out those whose armor had not survived the long months or the journey from wherever they'd all crawled out from.

Gunsmoke and sparks filled the air, mingling with the scent of rot and a strange heat that made the buildings sweat and drip. Though the bodies were decayed, they were still YoRHa bodies. The already sparse ranks of the resistance were hard-pressed to keep up, and the creatures seemed to be getting wiser with every moment. Learning to use of bodies more powerful than ones they might have been used to.

Theta had little trouble severing parts in quick efficient motions that accompanied the flash of a high-intensity laser from her weapons, but dodging attacks was not her strong suit. Anemone kept to her back to cover her, sword in one hand, gun in the other. Gamma emerged like a titan, her face covered in a mix of red and black oil, the arms from the amalgam pulled free and swung with force that shattered them as well as the units they impacted. Steam vented from her shoulders, and she joined the front of the ranks.

For 9S, the world went gray.

Fighting against the YoRHa bodies that no longer belonged to their owners, coming in seemingly endless numbers, the clear sky in his visual field processed as dull and densely clouded. Explosions registered in his aural processor. Jackass was there, but she didn't exist to him at that moment.

He had to protect her.

A scream. Someone fell to his left. He moved. The bodies dropped. There was no carrying them away. There was nowhere to carry them to. This was the final battlefield. They would live, or they would die.

He had to protect her.

Their speed was growing. Their combat routines weren't fancy, but they don't need to be. There are so many of them. And they are so few. They have always been so, so few.

He had to protect her.

He swore he heard the laughter of the machine network, possessing those who had once been his comrades, and all at once the world crashed down on him. It's was only the two of them and the bodies of the infected were piling on. Their black boxes were all they have. Where was she? Why wasn't she there with him? He has to trust her. If they couldn't use the reaction, they could both self-destruct, and he would meet her back on the Bunker. Please let her just be on the Bunker _safe_.

"UNIT 9S, AT EASE!"

The domineering shout gripped him by his wiring and clicked him forcibly back into the present.

YoRHa bodies were piled up in the center of the camp. He was kneeling over one, Cruel Oath in hand. His self-destruct timer was fading from his UI.

He dropped the weapon and clapped his hand to his mouth. "I… I didn't…"

Wormwood appeared over him. Tall and thin-faced and dispassionate as 9S had ever seen him, but he was actually looking 9S in the face. Acknowledging that he existed with an extension of his hand.

"They weren't the ones," he croaked in his warped voice. "They didn't laugh."

9S stared up at him and managed to suppress the quiver of his lip as a spark of understanding he did not want passed between them. Just like him, Wormwood had lost someone special to him the day the Bunker fell—to the sound of the machines laughing through YoRHa's mouths.

He took Wormwood's hand but quickly put distance between them. He couldn't handle that right now. "4S…?" he whispered.

"BLACK BOX SIGNAL ONLINE. COMBAT ZONE DID NOT EXTEND TO DESIGNATED REPAIR AREA."

On wobbling legs, he turned back to look at the scent with eyes unclouded by his memories. Pieces of YoRHa bodies coated the ground. Not a drop of lubricant in any of them—it had dried up or spilled out long ago. The sickles were all mysteriously absent, replaced by red crystals the same as 9S had picked up. Resistance members sagged against the weeping concrete, some of them weeping themselves and holding onto one another. The repair bay was already at capacity, and Jackass was busily assisting the usual attendant.

A high-pitched yelp saw them all jump back to the ready. Freesia was pointing at something.

The crystals were melting down into something dark and mercurial and flowing away of their own volition. Even the one in 9S' pocket dripped down his leg with a disgusting warmth and slipped away.

9S followed their flow. Theta came immediately to his side, her eyes studying his for some sign of what the hell they'd all just experienced. He didn't look at her. He followed to where he already knew the blood would go.

Humility hung up by some observation device Pine had crafted. She wasn't there, so he and Theta were the only ones to witness the eerie blue and violet light that issued from the blade as the red flow seeped into its strange symbols.

In the back of 9S' mind, V's words echoed: _If the veils are thin, there may be demons._

With the calm of someone dangerously close to the edge, he turned to Theta. "I'm going to go check on V."

She nodded without looking away from Humility and did not try to stop him.

* * *

The transporter hissed, and 9S stepped out into the balmy temperatures of the forest, where spring was a little closer at hand than in the ruins. Pod 042's marker was close. Less than a hundred meters.

On the remains of the bridge, the only sounds were of the breeze and the birds and the muffled clanging of Masamune's endless work. It was peaceful. It may have even refreshed him, if he were not on edge with the knowledge that V was so close to the church. He dropped down where the upper bridge broke. Tower debris had cluttered most of the lower courtyard. He didn't think V was down there.

His eyes rose to the other side of the broken lower bridge and he froze.

V was there, sprawled out and sound asleep. For him to be resting at this hour, he'd definitely done something he shouldn't have and was recovering.

The red-haired android was leaned over him, cheek just barely above V's chest, her eyes equal parts watery with guilt and steeled by fury. She'd cut her hair. The air was clear of sand or any other obstruction, and something in 9S' memory responded with a match when she stood.

It was a time when 2B was there. She'd gotten jealous. It was cute. Learning that the resistance member killed her friend had not been cute. Learning that she was YoRHa had been dark and unsettling and he had not understood why 2B responded the way she did at the time.

"You're not supposed to be here," she growled.

Whatever 9S had been holding onto to keep himself together during the past two weeks broke as quietly as a young twig underfoot. An E unit was with V. She was standing between _him_ and V.

9S was very aware that he might lose V to old age or illness or V might actually find his way home. V might even be killed in circumstances beyond his control. But he would not lose V to an E unit. That was really all there was to it.

No executioner would ever take anything from him ever again.


	62. Disconnection

An explosion thinned V's sleep.

"Woah kid, chill! Lady-bot, don't—! Ah fuck, they're not listening! Soda can, can't you do something?!"

"NEGATIVE. PODS ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO ENGAGE IN COMBAT WITHOUT DIRECT ORDERS."

"Shit, should I shock 'em a little?"

"THIS UNIT HAS DOUBTS ABOUT UNIT GRIFFON'S CLASSIFICATION OF 'A LITTLE'. PROPOSAL: WAKE SUBJECT V UP."

"I would fuckin' love to but if he's sleepin' through this somehow I don't think an alarm clock will work!"

"PROPOSAL: SHOCK HIM A LITTLE."

"Oh, fuck you!"

V's life, paradoxically long and short at the same time, was filled with an absence of rest. The crass squawks of his familiar should not have grated on him any more than usual, but his left arm was heavy and coursing with fever and the noisier they were, the more he awakened to just how unlike himself he felt.

Power crashed through him, a rain-swelled river that he was not yet fit to cross nor harness. The dragon's soul promised him obedience, but her soul was not what abided with him. This was no demon with a core he could hold and bind to his wishes or a mind that could be reasoned with. The potent power left in her bones was more like a headless brute thrashing around on instinct inside of him. True, without the soul's blessing, it may have casually crushed him in its throes, but even still it would not settle. It couldn't think, but through him it could perceive, and his mind ran with imagery and instinct that didn't belong to him. Tens of thousands of years of experience reacted at once to the clang of metal and the roar of combat, raising fire in the dragon's bones, and so in V's as well.

His hand shot out to Griffon's beak, and the other caught Pod before he could drift out of the way.

"Shut up."

Sweat ran down his body. The dragon's fever was not like the one the gods set on him. The latter burned from within, while the fore was like being enclosed in a molten shell. A battle response rather than a sickness, focused to a point of white intensity around his darkened and scaled left hand.

It shared only a base resemblance to the arm Vergil had torn from Nero, but the memory and perhaps his own remorse magnified it until it might as well have been the very same. The disgust came back fresh and sharp the longer he looked at it. His lips parted to curse it for the eyesore it was, but a sharp image of a younger, similarly afflicted Nero killed the thought.

Pesky fatherly love, was it? Ha.

"It tempts me to think this world a purgatory, were it not so much more creative in its mockery than hell."

He released the chatty familiars and climbed to his feet, creeping to the edge of the broken bridge. 9S and Fern were descending the trail of rubble and white debris into what remained of the inner courtyard. Pod fire rattled out like an infinite shuffle of cards, occasionally interspersed with some of the more creative attack programs. Spears of light and a burst of electricity that Fern narrowly dodged. Even a hammer protocol executed with such extreme prejudice that V felt the bridge quake beneath his feet. Fern's methods leaned more toward the evasive, but in every head-on clash, she proved the stronger. Perhaps it had been more by chance than by intention that she had not harmed 9S in their previous encounter.

He pinched at the bridge of his nose. This was exactly what he'd wanted to avoid. This was no duel, they mere feral cats tearing at one another. Fern, to keep her memories drowned unbeknownst to her, and 9S…for what exactly? A human?

If V had learned one thing well these past weeks, it was that he was demon enough. Enough to be taken to the basin, and enough to reach out to the soul of a creature who had been dead for millennia. Was it because of his reunion with Urizen? Or because of the heritage that coursed through him that not even Yamato could cut away? Such 'why's no longer mattered. He had obtained power that would negate his need for maso and in exchange, he bore a visible marker. Fern's faith in his humanity was blind; it was beyond her to care about how much a demon he was.

9S would not prove the same. His irreverence was boundless, a quality admirable enough to spare a smirk for, but equally cause for practical concern. When machines were denied that which they chose to live for, they were overcome with an urge to destroy and be destroyed, and 9S had admitted that his processes worked the same. Finding out would undo him. At worst, he would lash out. At best, he might simply part ways with V.

V erased the thought and shook off the almost physical weight it threatened to press on him. It had no bearing on the situation beyond forcing him to find a covering for this wretched growth. He threw on the coat, but the sleeves did not fall long enough, and it left him little choice but to tear up his cloak. The fabric split in his grip with ease.

As he wrapped his arm to his satisfaction, he looked again at the battle underway below and glanced up at Pod 042. "I presume 9S is in little danger if you're so unconcerned about this."

"AFFIRMATIVE. HOWEVER, IF UNIT FERN RECOVERS MEMORY OF BEING AN E UNIT, THERE IS A 99.7% CHANCE OF UNIT 9S' DESTRUCTION. PROPOSAL: FORCE UNITS TO CEASE COMBAT."

He rolled his eyes skyward and grabbed his cane. "Sitzfleisch."

Griffon let V down just outside the well of gravity that engulfed both androids. Fern's weight, presumably even greater than that of 9S, did not offer nearly as much resistance at it should have when he snatched her free of it and threw her to the dirt. Though his body was still bent and fragile, the restlessness of the red dragon lent him familiar strength.

"Leave."

Fern's eyes jumped between him and 9S, the urge to obey fighting with her instinct to eliminate the threat to her blissful ignorance. "But—!"

He brandished the cane just before her face, eyes narrowed but cool. "You took certain liberties took in my partial absence these past few days." A faint wind that had nothing to do with the air stirred between them, and the tattoos writhed tellingly atop his skin. She winced back from the rising pressure he exuded. "Were you wise, you would cross the ravine. Before I begin counting your transgressions in earnest."

Behind him, the gravity well faded. Fern scrabbled back and 9S shot past in pursuit, so intent on his target that he did not seem to register V's presence.

"Capture."

Pod 042's wire yanked 9S back across the courtyard and into V, who easily corralled him within both arms and the cane. On the other side of the debris, Fern hesitated. A hard look from V, and she vanished.

9S' ragged breaths pushed against the restraint of the cane, but he made no effort to move. It was for the best. The force running through V was not his own, and he did not know its depths.

"I do seem to recall," V said slowly. "That this was precisely my reason for keeping you separated from her."

9S' head remained trained on where Fern had gone. "Do you know that's an E unit?"

"8E, yes. Pod made me aware when we made contact with her."

"Then why are you still with her?!" He drooped forward. "Why would you stay with an executioner?!"

The unexpectedly vitriolic outburst was not lost on V, but he could not make it his focus. The lingering battle lust emanating so close to him had the dragon further riled. He had no idea how to make her grasp that 9S only appeared human and wasn't their enemy. He could only grip his cane as if it were a ward to keep the flashes of her bottomless hate for humans at bay. Curious though his behavior was, 9S could not stay. The thoughtless reactivity of the dragon's power posed too great a danger.

"Her being an E unit has no bearing on what I required her for."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

V lowered the cane and leaned on it. "I wasn't aware that information was of any importance."

9S sucked in an uneven breath for an even more uneven laugh. Sudden emotionality was common in him, but never so far into the realm of hatred. Even his sword remained in hand, gripped in shuddering silence as he bore down whatever rage had overcome him.

"It's important to me," he admitted bitterly.

"So I gather. But even had I known, there is little to tell. She doesn't remember that she is YoRHa, much less that she had such a sordid role. I understand you restored her memory once before, but all she recalls of it now is that she fears you." He gestured to a web of cracks on the face of a white block. "And hates you, it seems."

"The feeling's mutual," 9S muttered.

"The feeling is why you were supposed to keep your distance," V said bitingly. "If you are done, you should return to the camp."

9S turned, his sword still held tight as he searched V's face. "...I fought demons today."

The words bounced behind V's blank gaze. Gunshot cracks popped in time with the knuckles on his bandaged hand. "You're sure?"

"It smells like decomposed animal flesh when they show up, right?" A low wind picked up around them. V focused on pushing it back, but 9S rubbed at his arm as if to ward off a sourceless chill. "They possessed a bunch of the YoRHa bodies still lying around. And they came to the camp. I scanned one and—I didn't see anything, technically but I know there was something inside of it. I could hear it thinking. And when we killed them all there were these crystals. Red with faces on them. Humility drank them. Like it did to you."

The stench in the desert. The portals had been closed by Emil's explosive last moments, of that he was certain, but some ants had gotten through anyway. Sloppy. Infuriating. It was the entire point of his near-death in the ravine to avoid exactly this moment, and for nothing. The dragon's power chanted hate through his mind, feeding on him and echoing him until his vision shimmered white. He loomed over 9S without meaning to, only realizing when the boy took a confused, cautionary step back.

"...I'm sorry." The words were tight to his ears so he couldn't fathom how they sounded to 9S. Too much of his focus was on keeping the lid on that power rushing to lend itself to him. To give an outlet to his anger.

"Are you really trying to protect me, V?"

More than he knew. "Yes."

"Then tell me what's going on." The sword vanished from 9S' loosened grip. his anger vanished with it, replaced by that pitiful, seeking face he only made when he wanted to extend his trust somewhere he wasn't sure it should go. "Is all of this happening because you're still sick? I saw the salt in the park. I know you still have white chlorination."

V gave an exasperated sigh, more at himself than at 9S. "It wasn't my intention to hide that from you. It was a chaotic event and my mind was…occupied." A fancy means to say he'd been careless. "It does involve the illness, but it is a long story and I am in no condition to tell it to you this instant."

"Because you did something dangerous out in the desert." V scowled, and 9S almost smiled. "I figured when I saw you sleeping."

"Then you know I'm irate at being awakened prematurely," V said with an imperious raise of his chin.

That was a well-worn path that should have been familiar and easy to tread, but it did not manage to coax 9S out of his tightly wound mood. "And I'm irate that E unit brought you here of all places, so I guess we're even."

Not ideal, V could admit. But this was getting old. "Pod would not have allowed it if there was an alternative. Do you not have your fellow scanners to worry after?"

"Why do you keep trying to rush me out of here?"

Bite. Claw. Flame. Arrow. Gods, he might actually prefer Griffon's abrasive chatter to this creature's thoughts. "Because your persistence is trying my patience. You came to see if I am alright. I am. Once I have rested, I will move on from this place."

"With her."

"If I still have need of her, yes." He resisted the urge to cross his arms. It would only draw attention to the crude bandages. "9S, if her model is meant to mean something to me, you'd do well to enlighten me instead of sulking."

9S' eyes narrowed and watered, and V braced for another outburst, but it didn't come. Whatever the problem was, 9S was not able to release it as more than a tremble in his shoulders. He broke eye contact with a tight-jawed scowl.

"It wouldn't be the first time an E unit has taken something important from me." Before V could decide how (or if) he wanted to take that, 9S raised yet another difficult question. "What happened to your arm?"

"Frostbite," he said tartly. 9S' brows knitted in utter bafflement. V could not imagine what conclusions the scanner may have jumped to hearing of only the aftermath of his exploits, so it was only fair that he provided an explanation. In what he hoped was the briefest and least alarming manner possible. "Demons appeared in the ravine. I spent seven days attempting to make sure they would not continue to appear, and for my efforts, I was cast into the waterfall and tasked to survive with barely any magic at my disposal. I understand I made it quite far before hypothermia's more unpleasant symptoms besieged me."

The scanner's face curled into a scowl, his eyes darting as if along a page in the telltale way they did when he was recontextualizing a problem. No doubt he'd passed these weeks fretful and confused—one of the least pleasant combinations of his moods, and yet in this case more justified than ever.

"Where the hell was she?!"

"Finding a cure," V said, vying for placation if reason would not suffice. "Which may have been successful."

"You...mean it?" There was the brightness V was accustomed to. "V that would make you the first human to survive it! I mean that's what we thought before, but—Really this time? You're not sick anymore?"

"Time will tell. Until it does, I require her."

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"She's not going to kill me, 9S."

"It's not about her killing you, it's about her getting you killed. The goal was for you to stay hidden, but they know her face now and at least three people know you're out here; you can't just keep running around with her forever. Even if she values your life as much as I do, that doesn't mean she's thought at all about the consequences. There are bigger things out there and she can't protect you from them." He ran his hands over his face and laughed weakly. "I don't even know if I can protect you."

Flame. Arrow. V ignored the thought and pushed his cane beneath 9S' chin. For this at least, the dragon could wait a moment. "That was rather…specific. Has Theta become a problem for you?"

"No," he said in a small and shaken voice. "I still don't have a goddamn clue what she actually wants with me. She says she wants me to be safe in one breath, and the next one she tells me not to trust her because my goals may not align with hers! What the hell am I supposed to make of that?"

It occurred to V that he had no idea what exactly 9S had been dealing with between now and their last meeting. His hate for Fern had fallen away but all that lie beneath that one focal point were snarls of problems whose context there was no time to grasp. A solution had to be possible, but V was just barely holding back a creature with no mind, what felt like unlimited power, and a lust for battle that wouldn't calm. There was no time to make plans or right wrongs or reconcile the differences in their concerns.

But if he said that, he was certain 9S would implode.

As if sensing his frustration, 9S pressed him. "I've already fought demons. So what is it. What are you really trying to protect me from, V? Why does it have to be her and not me?"

**Arrow** .

V winced. The dragon's insistence had boiled down to that one image of arrows falling through the sky and it felt like she was screaming it at him. Why arrows? Those were human tools and she hated—

He snatched 9S and hissed a command. Pod 042 complied with a golden sphere that repelled a round of shots. Low caliber, he thought. They sounded nothing like Dante's guns, at least.

Within his coat, 9S squirmed, only to suddenly freeze. "Aconite…?"

V looked over his shoulder. A female android with passing similarity to Fern stood behind them. She was taller. Her red hair even shorter, revealing the smoldering storm of her scowl over the barrel of a smoking pistol.

"Aconite," 9S repeated, his voice low and warning. "This isn't the one you're looking for. He isn't YoRHa."

Her eyes flicked to the two Pods above them, and to the perimeter of the shield around them, and finally settled on V's coat. She shook her head, cursing and laughing in turns and took her time to reload.

"The one who killed Rho and Lobelia is a female unit," 9S pleaded. "The camp has all the information already!"

A bullet pinged against the barrier. "Fuck you."

"I'm serious, he's—!" In his clumsy desperation to make the situation resolve peacefully, he must have stuck his hand outside the barrier. A shot fired. V saw something black exit his periphery, and then 9S was firmly back inside with him, clutching a hand that no longer had the correct number of digits.

A flash of divine comprehension that was not V's filled his mind with brilliance. The dragon could not think but she perceived. 9S and the damage done to him. The twisting waves of concern, the acids of contempt, and the thumping drum of displeasure growing loud in V's chest. She understood.

The boy was theirs.

V had two thoughts on the heel of this second-hand epiphany: The absolute audacity of the dragon to assume anything of his was hers to claim shared ownership of; and a harsh correction that he might as well have saved. The dragon perceived as he perceived. That was the conclusion she had come to. However else V might have preferred for her to think about it, the truth remained that she no longer had to struggle within her new and unclear boundaries.

When her attention focused on Aconite, he pressed his coat over 9S' face and freely released her.

The ink washed from his body, funneling down into his left arm, and a shimmering haze of heat rippled the air around him. Feathers erupted from beneath his bandages, bright and blue and churning with electricity. They crept up as far as the side of his neck, and he was certain he felt a shift in the way his teeth sat in his mouth. He raised his arm.

Alarm pierced Aconite's cold intent, and in the moment of her hesitation, he snatched her in talons of violet-white plasma and crushed her into the castle wall. Her screams were brief. The scent of charred clothing and burned metal replaced them on the wind.

V did not release 9S until the transformation had receded back below his slightly singed bandages. He threw his coat over his shoulder and stalked off. 9S was still staring at the sparking remains, his eyes tracing the talon-shaped gouges left in the stone when V returned and dropped 9S' severed finger in his lap.

"I'm protecting you from me."

9S looked up at him with a horrified, uncomprehending stare.

V rubbed at his eyes. Now he truly was exhausted. He didn't have nearly as much control over that power as he'd have liked. But no portals opened. No rush of sickly hot fever and churned up memories came over him. That was enough of a victory for now. "As I place my trust in you in spite of your unwillingness to share what it is that so bothers you about the E type, so must you place your trust in me. When my business is done, I will tell you all that you ask."

"You don't get to say that." He climbed clumsily to his feet. "If you're going to say that—damn it, let me help!"

"9S," V groaned, worn down by physical fatigue, impatience, and the last miserable remains of his ability to endure 9S' stubbornness. "I am trying not to hurt you, is that not enough?"

"No! It's the same thing! It's the same thing 2B did before she died!"

"I'm **not** 2B."

In the distance, the falls roared. Herds of moose and boar beat the loam with heavy hooves, and the humid breeze moved through the trees at more of a yawn than a sigh. In the courtyard, where the sun suddenly seemed too bright, there was only silence.

By some force of will as unexpected as their meeting itself, 9S shed none of the tears brimming in his eyes.

"Yeah. You're right. You're not 2B." His voice was quiet. Barely a whisper, flat and dull as his eyes. "And I'm not Nero."

Choosing to be silent was V's specialty, but his mind raced for something to say. A dozen things, a hundred things, innumerable things he could have spoken crowded into his thoughts... only for his mouth to remain empty.

9S, meanwhile, passed him by and did not look back.

* * *

**A/N: And on that note, while V deals with his Bad End, it is time for a much-needed break. **

**This fic will be on hiatus until mid-February. This is to recuperate from the hectic holiday, take my time with the more tricky parts of the upcoming plot, and work on reining my chapter lengths in. The goal is 3-4k rather than the 5k+ I've been doing recently without changing the twice-weekly posting schedule. If breaking them up slows the pace down or paring them down doesn't cover enough ground, I'll just keep writing them 5K+ but on a once-weekly schedule to preserve quality and keep me from losing my goddamn mind. **

**This break is also to allow me time to both attend and recover from the NieR Automata orchestral concert at the end of January. If y'all have tickets, maybe I'll be a section over from you pretending to not be emotionally compromised by video game music in public.**

**Happy New Year, I hope you're starting 2020 off well, and I'll catch y'all in February.**

**PS: This fic is basically half character study through the juxtaposition of similar traumas, half science fantasy joyride through canon ft. Vergil: Dying Twink Edition and Punished Hackerman, and all parts complete self-indulgence. I'm not sure how 100+ of y'all decided you were into this, but thanks for reading.**


	63. Exponential Fracture

Wrath that had cooled to old ash beneath the idle months and winter snows reactivated inside of 9S and oozed from within like molten iron seeking a place to pool and burn. It flared through him in search single target that he could blame for the way his life had spiraled out of control in the past few weeks. 8E she should have been more than enough. The moment she appeared, things started to change for the worse, and her actions were directly responsible for both his arrest and his extended stay in the camp. Yet even though 9S would have hacked her into pieces given the opportunity, he didn't hate her half as intensely as he hated himself.

More specifically, his programming.

In a mere four syllables, V had opened old, dangerous cracks in 9S' being. He wanted to be angry with V, the way he would have been if he were only an android. V deserved so much worse than 9S had managed. But his base protocol kept an absolute perimeter around that one precious human presence. It cost 9S an incalculable effort to walk away. Every step was a steep climb over a different objection.

_'Go back'. _

_'Apologize'. _

_'V was only trying to protect him.'_

_'Wasn't that enough? Didn't that make him happy?'_

9S bit down until his silicone teeth gouged the inside of his cheek and his mouth filled with the taste of oil. Pod 153 once told him that primitive humans thought they could cure madness by drilling holes in their skulls to let spirits out. If he wasn't sure it would kill him, he might have taken the risk to reach inside his chest and physically remove the component of his OS chip that generated those stupid, docile impulses.

Regardless of the absurd suggestions from the base protocol on what he should feel, nothing about V's actions satisfied him.

It _didn't_ make him happy and it _wasn't_ enough.

V claimed he was protecting 9S from demons and from himself. 9S believed that. But he did not believe that was the whole truth. Strong emotion was disruptive, but it had no bearing on the sub-processes that logged his memories or those that identified patterns. For example, V's unusual increase in concentration when it came to Theta. Or his agitated but unsurprised response when 9S brought up problems bigger than he could handle.

9S should've known better. He should've known things would just repeat one way or the other if he let himself pretend V could occupy the space 2B left behind. So what if V was never going to kill him? So what if V was never going to take his treasured memories away? If it just ended with someone else getting hurt or dying for a stupid reason like protecting him, he didn't want that either. 2B had done it. Devola and Popola had done it. Even A2 had directly exchanged her life for his. And he was supposed to feel happy about it happening again just because V was human?

What a hilarious fucking joke. He could just die laughing.

His furious march weakened. Soon he slowed to a halt in the middle of the snowy road. Why did everything just keep repeating? Why did it always end like this? He couldn't do this again.

And he didn't have to.

Every sound, every sight, every single byte of external information filtering through 9S' processors sharpened until they were as crisp as a shard of polished glass jutting from a broken window. He didn't have to accept this. V himself had said as much. 9S hadn't thought of him as a god worth dying for—or even a god at all—in ages, but what was the use of being so infuriatingly beholden to V if he couldn't take his word as permission?

V wanted to keep secrets about himself? Fine. 9S had plenty of his own secrets and could forgive being tight-lipped about personal problems. But V keeping secrets related to 9S? That was… Frustrating? Unfair? Not V's place? _That_ one sent sparks flying up and down his back, so it must have been right.

His whole life had been hidden from him. It had to stop somewhere. If not with V, then he would make it stop elsewhere first. Fear was no longer a consideration. Clashing so hard against his protocols left him smoldering with the desire to know himself. To know he had control over himself.

And to take it if he didn't.

In the camp, Theta greeted him with an expectant look. She must have wanted an update or debrief but he didn't have time to explain the existence of demons to her. He had two jobs while he was in camp, and the first was to talk to Anemone about Aconite. No one would have questioned what happened to her after they'd just fought a bunch of dead YoRHa, but that wasn't the point. The point was that he first thing Anemone had asked him was if V had been the one to kill her people, and 9S had promised it wasn't him, and that was no longer the case. V had killed Aconite and he that could only create problems if 9S kept it a secret.

She made a difficult face when she saw his severed finger, the clenching of her jaw shifting and dimpling her cheeks. If she blamed V or was angry with him at all, she didn't say. All she did say was that Aconite went AWOL and that her death was on her for attacking an innocent party. Whatever else she might have thought about the matter she kept to herself.

9S let it lie with that. Job one complete. He re-attached the finger with only a wince at the mild sizzle. It wasn't a neat wound and the lines didn't match up like they were supposed to. It would need proper repair later, but hand dexterity wasn't a priority where he was going.

Job two was to find Jackass.

* * *

_'I'm not Nero.'_

V grimaced. He was aware of that. Just as he was aware that was a cheap, reflective retort that wouldn't have been out of place in a playground. An eye for an eye, dish and take exchange. Quick and incisive and basic and childish.

And he'd lost. Decisively.

God damn it.

Still, he took in his abrupt solitude with a measure of relief. He couldn't imagine trying to explain the unexpected and undesirable ways he began to come apart at the seams only moments after 9S stalked off.

The tattoos went first. They exploded from his body and splattered against the rubble like a tattered net dragged from the oil-clogged sea. Then came the uneasy heat flushing through his body. The twinge above his navel and the creeping sweat that raised goosebumps between his shoulders. His thoughts began to flash and cycle, but it wasn't images of his burning home or his mother that raced through his mind.

It was the sound of bells. There was a rhythm to these that did not match the peals that had drawn him into the woods. A stronger sound that clanged in his ears and played on his bones. He saw a red sky full of white infants, their mouths packed with gnashing salt-block teeth. The white giant was among them, shaped like a woman but inhumanly swollen as she lay among the burning ruins of a city. He saw the moment of passage when all became white light and white skies and a new world.

The dragon had told him a great many things when they spoke. A great, _great _many trifling things spoken in cryptic lines that interested him far less than making her power his own. Most of it he had ignored or already forgotten, but the cornerstone of their present arrangement was that 'they' (a term left as indeterminate as her name, but which he guessed to mean dragons and gods) were natural enemies. And now it seemed 'they' were waging war in him.

It was her memories that flashed through him like fresh splashes of blood while her power and the maso shoved and churned against one another. A clash of salt and fire that made a hell of his body. The mark in his palm burned beneath the bandages in red and violet waves as they sought dominance within him.

Both seemed to be forgetting that the body they were fighting over was _his_.

**"Be silent."**

The two powers snatched back from one another, forcibly parted by the reserve of demonic energy he'd received in the basin and the deadly edge of his foul impatient mood. Once more, he was alone with himself.

The taste of salt hovered at the back of his tongue. He wobbled as he dragged both himself and the dead weight of the tattoos toward the rubble. For being practically immaterial, they were heavy enough to have him scraping his cane along the stones just to stay upright. Beneath the dragon's cooling temper, her power wove around him like a cocoon and overlaid his own. It was still unsettled. Unfinished. She was more than capable of winning if it must come to that, but V wasn't sure that was the ideal outcome. If the maso burned from within him all at once, there was no telling what might happen, what doorways might open.

He'd have to go to the church as soon as he was able, rid himself of the gods and their maso before their squabbles grew beyond his ability to quell. For now, he let himself fall back onto the first stable stone he came across. The tattoos were creeping back into place on his body and he was perfectly content to sleep away his fatigue right there in the open.

_'I'm not Nero.'_

He pinched the bridge of his nose. God _damn_ it.

V lacked the extraordinary hubris of a demon, but he had human pride enough to be stung by his own complacency. If he'd wanted any chance at all to deny 9S, even just in the privacy of his own thoughts, all he had to do was have the discretion to not drunkenly compare him to Nero. Better yet, he should have never considered he resembled Nero at all. It wasn't all that long ago he would have been baffled that he had any paternal inclinations to spare, much less misplace so egregiously onto an anxious mechanical adolescent. But eight long, fruitless months digging through wreckage and rubble in search of a way to cross a distance ten thousand years deep and multiple dimensions wide made for curious circumstance. Too few enemies to fight. Too much time alone with his memories. With his regrets.

Pod 042 hovered over him in silence. Never judging, but always calculating, and likely neither surprised nor worried. It was possible that this battle may have been lost the moment V admitted the familial similarity to the support unit, and Pod may have been more the victor than 9S. From the very beginning, Pod had gone out of his way to facilitate 'understanding' between them.

All so he could appeal to V's sentiments.

Naturally, he had objected to the Pod's request. V's only concern was that 9S was away from him until he could be sure he wouldn't have another maso-fueled transformation. Putting demonic problems on 9S' shoulders meant saddling him with things he couldn't change, and in the same fashion V wasn't interested in a YoRHa problem he could barely understand much less effect. But Pod was reasonable and didn't not ask V for a solution. With it coming to light that 9S was not the only survivor of his kind, Pod only asked that 9S be protected, particularly from information that might cause him to break down. V's memory was a thing of flesh and blood that 9S couldn't access by any means if V wasn't willing to speak.

Who better than him to entrust with the knowledge that Project YoRHa had one last cruel protocol in wait?

The technicalities involved in V's humanity were going to come to light sooner or later. His arm could be blamed on the dragon if needed, but 9S had fought demons and was insightful as Pod when he chose to be. He would piece it together eventually. It seemed clear to V, through some intuition he wasn't too quick to try and name, that 9S was growing up in some sense. Whether he destroyed himself or not, it was neither his business nor Pod's to keep him a child.

Well, for V it just meant he had to start figuring out what his next steps would be when 9S went his own way. Considering what he'd seen in the dragon's memories, he had ideas. In fact, it was possible he might be gone very soon. Perhaps it might be wise to settle his debts and go alone.

He'd never been one for goodbyes in the first place.

* * *

At first, I am surprised when Pod 042 comes to retrieve me. I didn't think it would be so soon. If I'm honest, I didn't think he would come back for me at all. I release a long breath, unsure if I am venting relief or preparing myself. Even if V isn't calling me back just to let me know I'm not needed anymore, he remembers all my attempts to snap him out of his trance the past few days. There's no way he isn't furious with me. I spend most of the crossing replaying my actions and feeling my nerve sensors prickle.

When I reach the other side and don't find him waiting, I start to worry. V _was_ sleeping before the fight woke him. Maybe it was too soon. Maybe he's collapsed again and that's why Pod came to me.

I'm half right. V has managed to lay himself atop a stone near the bottom of the slope. Did he not have the strength to reach the top?

I can only see his hair spilling over the edge of a silicon block, his face turned away from me toward the sun. I suspect that he must have already fallen asleep again, but his arm reaches out with the steady deliberation of a bird spreading its wings. The handle of his cane glints in the light, pointing at the far side of the courtyard.

The gouges in the stone are the first thing to catch my attention. The massive, dark claw marks bring to mind all humanity's tales of monsters and nocturnal predators. I think fleetingly of his changed arm, avert my eyes, and tell myself it was just Shadow. A body on the ground helps me to believe it. For one moment I think it's the YoRHa boy, and a sickly feeling chokes the air from my chest. I identify confusion, fear, something that might be triumph or might be pity at the thought that V may have killed him. But these things all trample through me like animals fleeing a fire, until all I am left with is the churned mud in their wake.

It doesn't last long. It's not the kid, only a resistance member.

"Dispose of that."

He's never used that tone of voice before. It's heavy. Like he could make the words cast their own shadow if he wanted them to. I don't think he sounds like that because of me, but it's not as though I can really ask what's wrong. I count myself lucky he's asked anything of me at all.

The body reeks of fried wiring and heated metal. It's a hot ozone smell I have come to associate with Griffon, but the damage seems extensive even for him. I do not think about V's arm while I march back to the bridge. There's no need to. As I shift the body to throw it into the ravine, the head lolls back and reveals a woman's face. The shock was enough to crack her lenses. Her blown pupils look like shattered doll eyes. There are tags around her neck, partially sunken into the melted skin above her collar. One reads Lobelia and means nothing to me. Another reads Aconite and scratches at something within me.

I used to know that name. I used to know this android.

In a different camp in a different sector.

She used to call me Ivy.

Just the thought of this name that was once mine is enough to send a cold shock through my systems. I lose my grip and drop the body. It slumps over the edge without falling and I wrestle an urge to rescue her even though she's already dead. I knew her once, I'm sure of it. But she's only a bunch of fried parts now, and V asked me to get rid of her, so I do not understand why I feel I am about to throw away something important. Were we friends? Allies? She couldn't have been my lover or I probably would have…

Would have what? _Would have what?_

I clench my teeth and shove my boot against her back. She makes no sound as she falls. The roar of the waterfall swallows everything like she never even existed. I close my eyes and focus on that endless rumble. I try to imagine what V will need when he wakes, but the possibilities don't come as fast as I would like. Food? Water? After that?

What then?

What then?

What then?

What then?

I close my eyes and hold my breath. Heat builds up in my body without the extra ventilation. I release it and am momentarily lost in the cloud.

What I used to be called, who I knew, where I was, what I was doing—there's nothing to gain in remembering those things. Even the YoRHa boy is not important. He's gone now. I'm just Fern, and no matter the reason, I'm still the one V has chosen to stay with him. He will go back to sleep and he will wake up. He will need me for whatever he needs me for. I will do what he asks.

The cloud clears. I am alone on the edge of the ravine, and at the end of the path I took to arrive, V is expecting me.

That's all I need.


	64. Pointless Victory

**A/N: This is your courtesy call that the shit 9S went through with Adam and Eve is the primary subject matter of this chapter. So if you're sensitive to rape allusions, tread carefully. And while we're here, since I am deep, deep in the side material at this juncture: Everything about what Adam was dealing while also being a scenery-chewing ham in-game is canonical.**

Hundreds of insubstantial remnants of data cling to 9S. They are only junk packets with no coherent thought or memory, coating him the same way dust or stands of animal fur eventually accumulate on his clothes. They come away just as easily and he will pick up more insignificant noise just like it over time.

He is more concerned about the massive shapes that stretch across the deepest parts of his consciousness data like conductive trails on a circuit board. There's no way they don't disrupt the natural paths of his thought routines, but he can only guess at how or to what extent. Trying to remove these larger intrusions by himself has proved pointless. All he's managed is to end up flat on his back, his vision strobing in washed-out shades of gray and pops of colorless pixelation.

But he hasn't given up yet.

If the initial experience with A2 indicates a pattern, even deep-rooted synaptic alignments like these will be removable if he's in proximity to the original source. At least half of this trash left inside of him must belong to Adam. Presuming he's somewhere on the ark to begin with, 9S can still purge the data if he locates the administrator. An urgent, back-of-the-throat nausea makes him press the back of his hand to his mouth. Finding Adam isn't something he wants to do, but he is already here and his mind is already set.

Local resolution scales back. His vision clears. The machine network is white. Once more on the surface layer of the network, he picks himself up off the ground and opens his read-outs.

N2's red and black shape hangs in the air on the other side of the translucent screen.

She has been hovering around him since he arrived. Like she knows there is no one outside and he is unguarded. Or knows what he is trying to do and finds it interesting. 9S avoids her gaze, but it's hard to ignore the way her unblinking stare traces everything he's doing. Within the ark, she is the closest thing to an omniscient presence. Everything he is doing, thinking, and feeling at any given moment, she should be able to see. There's no reason for her to bother with examining it from the outside like that.

Machines do have reasons for their behavior, strange or counterintuitive as they are to 9S. He's come to accept this much. But he thinks with irritation that he really doesn't care to understand the kind of motives a meta-personification like N2 might have for this kind of behavior.

Her face flickers. He thinks he catches a wide, smug grin before she disappears, as though she'd heard his thoughts.

The landscape of the network changes around him. The white paths shift and restructure, no doubt according to N2's whim. 9S doesn't move. Whatever she is doing, if it's dangerous to him it will be more effective to disconnect than to run. Soon enough, the space is stationary and silent again. The route before him still twists and turns in maze-like angles, but he notes that there are no branches ahead of him for as far as he can see.

The way back is gone. In its place is a long drop to a different layer of the network that is clearly not where he was only a moment ago.

A threat assessment sub-routine recalls Pod 153's voice from his memory data, asking why the tower had had any means of android access to begin with. Just like then, it does not matter. 9S knows already that something he wants is the end of this path. He trots along the empty route mechanically, paying little attention to where he is headed. N2 can move the network around him at will, and he can disconnect at will. On that ground at least, they're evenly matched.

The empty uniformity of the network gives his mind too little to do and the minutes pile up like snow. There's no information to take in. Nothing to keep him grounded but the fabricated metronome beat of his boots and a dull buzz of apprehension low in his chest. He remembers 1S saying being out here alone was like being dead and thinks he understands. No matter how fast or slow he goes, or how deep into unknown territory, the network stretches on and on.

It is relief that washes over him as he finally sees the end of the path, but a murmur in the air stops him short of it. The sound is quiet but jarring after hearing only his footsteps for what feels like hours. It doesn't sound like N2 or like anyone calling after him. It is an ambient, distant sound.

A sharp tug in his chest tells him he's found what he's looking for.

"Adam..."

His muted whisper scatters the noise. For several minutes he is left alone to shift his weight from toe to heel and leg to leg while searching for any sign of activity. When a familiar light finally swirls down before him, the one who appears from it isn't Adam.

It's Eve.

A bright red warning appears in 9S' interface. Adam had torn him apart from the inside, but it was Eve who had battered his body to the point he could no longer connect to it. 9S easily recalls being swung like a toy by whichever limb Eve found closest at hand and the vicious smile as he did it.

But now the younger of the brothers regards him with an almost passive expression. He is all surprise and cautious curiosity. "Long way from your friends, aren't you? You need my brother for something?"

It takes a surprising amount of effort just for 9S to nod. Breathing is difficult. The longer he looks at Eve, the harder the tug in his chest. He drops to one knee, fingers scraping at his coat to get at the burning sensation he initially assumed was anger. He'd suspected this would be the case but isn't happy to find his theory correct.

He's been carrying _both_ of them all this time.

"Hey!" Eve leans over him, wide-eyed and bewildered. There isn't the slightest hostility in his voice. "Are you okay? Just wait—I'll get my brother!"

9S is left behind on the path where he squeezes out a bitter, wheezing laugh.

The blueprint for the version 9S remembers is there—Adam is still the center of his existence and should anything happen to Adam, Eve will probably go mad in the exact same way. But there's nothing else. This is not the exact same Eve.

"Look, look! He's all bent over!"

"Yes, I can see that, Eve."

Cords bunch beneath 9S' plates. Together, the brothers are a more accurate semblance of what 9S recalls. Eve still refuses to put a shirt on and Adam still looks like an old-world businessman who fell asleep in his clothes after having too much alcohol. He's even still wearing those stupid glasses, albeit they're sitting on top of his head now. He has the same voice and same face, but the similarities end there. His expression is more aloof than smug, in the same way that Eve's is more inquisitive than aggressive. There's no animosity. No intent to kill.

Adam pauses to consider 9S, and it's clear that he at least recognizes him. He isn't the same Adam, but he knows. When he kneels he says something almost clumsy about not harming 9S. He's sure it's supposed to soothe or reassure him, but being spoken to so softly by that voice is like having his skin on backwards. For Adam to reach out to him too?

That's too much.

_**"**__DON'T _**_TOUCH_**_ ME!"_

The local resolution blasts back around 9S. Eve's head swivels as memories void into the open air and circle them like jagged shadows of vultures, shuddering with the remnants of emotional response. He grabs Adam and pulls him back from 9S as though his crumpled shape somehow poses a threat to either of them. Adam is calmer. He watches his previous incarnation with his chin casually at rest on the back of one hand.

"Adam, leave him." Eve glares at the memory of the prior Adam's corpse. It is a peripheral detail as 9S was carried out of the copied city, but one magnified by 9S' loathing. "He's probably just here to hurt you again; you don't have to help him."

"Now, now, don't be petty. We've seen this data before. I took 9S to make 2B hate me in the first place, remember?"

"You're the one who's my brother!" Eve protests stubbornly. "Why should I care about him? I don't wanna help someone who took you away from me."

"I'm right here, Eve. And that's not you."

"It used to be!"

9S ignores their bickering. They're both where he needs them. He can purge their data if he just gets ahold of it. His fingers curl into claws over his chest. Something gives. Every inch gained sends bright flares through his body, but he doesn't stop. Whatever they have altered in him will finally be out and gone, and he can't decide more if he wants to shove those unwanted intrusions down both their goddamn throats or crush them underfoot.

"Hey…" Eve mutters, shifting uncomfortably as his attention drifts back to 9S. When 9S ignores him, he reaches out and grabs him by the wrists. "Hey! Stop, you're being weird! You can't just yank on your data like that! Adam, can he do that?"

9S cannot manage to clench his teeth or muster another shout around his ragged breaths, nor does he have the strength to snatch his arms out of Eve's grip.

Beside them, Adam taps two fingers just below the poorly tied ribbon at his neck. He is humming to himself as though neither Eve nor 9S are any of his concern, transfixed on a mass of basic data, all static and text. 9S had no connection to his body at the time, so the memory lacks any sort of distraction. No visuals. No audio. No external sensory or interface at all. _'Someone help me'_ and _'You're wrong!'_ display in sterile white font a thousand times each. The only way he could scream in the absence of a mouth. They wrap around each other and around every secret thought and feeling and contradiction Adam tears loose and leaves like open wounds in his wake, salting them with his words and coating them with the oily film of his gratification.

The whole experience measures barely sixty kilobytes and 9S thinks finding that out must be what it feels like to be spit on.

"Eve, hold him for me." Eve lifts 9S up off his feet without question and Adam gives a weary sigh. "Not like that... Just help him stay upright."

With A2, this experience was one of surprise and paralyzing sparks of agony. There is no pain at all as Adam weaves the data away, just a strange phantom presence in the shape of what must have been left behind. Obsession. Hate. Things 9S already knows. Anxiety. Frustration. He clings to those, thinking that those things are his own and Adam is taking away more than he should.

As he latches on, it spreads to reveal itself otherwise.

The weight hits him first. A heavy sense of obligation to know and perform the role of 'elder' to the younger being he has created to prevent his own death. Eve imitates him and learns from him, but there is no one for Adam to learn from in the same way. If he wants growth, knowledge, anything at all, even if it is just the ability to be reliable and ensure his and Eve's survival, he has to pursue it himself. He looks like humans, but he is still a machine crafted by simplistic aliens. He cannot comprehend how humans think or behave when examining their remains. There are too many inconsistencies. Understanding is out of his reach, and that eventually gives way to a sort of madness.

The Adam of then was so sure he'd finally understand humans if he could just experience death one time.

The Adam of now speaks to Eve and cuts through the fog of memory. He's giving directions. The thoughts of the little brother trickle down and they are laughably simplistic compared to Adam's: _I won't let you be hurt. I'll protect you. Stay with me._

_Don't leave me all alone._

9S doesn't cling on when he feels those familiar things writhe out of him. He's been to the core of Eve's being once before and none of it can be a surprise to him. Nothing in Eve exists or existed that 9S didn't already have inside himself. Even if that could not be admitted at the time.

"See?" asks Adam. "Was that so bad?"

Eve makes an exaggerated 'blegh' noise and drops 9S carelessly. His weight hits the path to the sound of Adam's sigh.

9S barely notices. The removal of so much data that has been a part of him for so long has functionally restarted him, and a dozen sub-processes rush to suture his thought routines back together. In the meantime, his consciousness is reduced to a single bulb blinking on an off in an otherwise dark interface. All awareness waits on ellipses crossing his boot-up screen until their string finally ends in 'Complete'.

His interfaces click back on like a light. The first thing he sees is Adam and Eve, and he finds to his dismay that he can classify them in a single word.

Children.

They've appeared physically older than him from the moment they were born, but without any reason for them to fight it is obvious they are only kids. Smart and powerful but the exact same kind of simple 9S is used to encountering among machine kind. Everything about their former selves was a base protocol to kill androids layered over a game of make-believe they played with humanity's afterimage. There was nothing left for them to shape themselves after.

The current Adam balances two white cubes of his and Eve's extracted data atop a finger. He gives the impression he is a version who isn't worried about shaping himself after much of anything. With a clench of his fist, he crushes both the cubes and with them all that remains of the previous Adam and Eve's thought routines.

Still pressed to the floor, 9S watches the white flecks float away like ash. For him, there's something horrible about the way it disappears that far surpasses the reality that Adam has cheated him out of the chance to destroy those fragments himself.

"That was… your data…"

The brothers share a squint and Eve looks back at 9S with innocent puzzlement. "No it wasn't."

"Even if it were," says Adam. "Carrying around the frustrations of our previous versions is a bit regressive, isn't it? We left all of that behind."

"I didn't," 9S hisses between his teeth, struggling just to pick his head up. "I _can't_."

Adam's frown is unexpectedly sympathetic, but resentment numbs what little of 9S' senses he's managed to regain. The network's co-administrators are past being bound by what they were originally made to do. They don't hate 9S. They don't feel anything for him at all. They don't have to.

"Whatever," Eve huffs, crossing his arms over his needlessly puffed out chest. "You're fine now, right? If you wanna be gloomy, you don't need us. Right, Adam? Let's go play!"

Eve pulls his older brother toward the edge of the path, and Adam lets himself be pulled with the kind of leniency only fondness could give despite his dispassionate, long-suffering reproach. They have each other and the rest of the world is inconsequential.

9S watches them dissipate into the network without a glance back at him.

"Did you get anything you actually wanted out of this?" a familiar voice asks. "Did you do anything that mattered?"

The black stalks of N2's legs materialize just to the side of 9S' head. Her hands are folded behind her back. She isn't facing him, so he can't tell if she's asking him or mocking him or both.

* * *

9S clamped his hands to his face but couldn't block out the temperature, the light, the sound, and all the rest of the ambient, awful sensations of being back in his body. The frequency sang its gnat-buzz song, driving a needle through him as he writhed on the white silicon. He swatted blindly for the dial only for the sound to suddenly to fade away without his interference. A black shape sat beside the pod, indistinct through 9S' watery squint. It was idly twirling a spear.

"4S…?"

"Yep."

9S winced. Either 4S was pissed or something bad had happened. "How long have you been there?"

"Almost an hour." The heavy spearhead hummed through the still air. "How long were you in?"

He checked his internal clock and sank back down with a grumble. No wonder he felt like he was splitting in half. "87 minutes."

The spear stopped. "When I finally got the all-clear you know what I came out to? A pile of chopped up YoRHa in the back of two trucks, enough explosives to wipe the camp off the map, and resistance androids flashing their optic test lights at each other like they were trying to signal in Morse code. And _you_ were gone."

9S rubbed at his forehead. So they were really going to do it. Blow the debris blocking the factory entrance and incinerate the bodies. He didn't blame them. He knew it was demons and still found himself scrutinizing the corpses of android and machine alike after leaving the camp. 'Are you alive' was suddenly a real and rational question to judge a stranger by.

Jackass had been in the middle of a demolition assessment when he found her. She wasn't going anywhere, just providing the charges. The camp had gotten away with a rare casualty rate of zero so she opted to remain at the maintenance bay and ensure it stayed that way. True to her unpredictable nature, she'd let 9S take the pod with no more than a distracted 'Whatever, just don't break it'.

"You found me," 9S pointed out. "So Jackass must've explained…"

"Yeah she explained! And I told her I'd chase her down with this spear like a caveman if you were damaged!" He stabbed it down with surprising force for having just one arm and planted himself beside 9S. "What are you trying to do? Why are you being so reckless?"

"The guy whose plan was 'I'll just ask the person who made up the whole YoRHa plan where the factory is' doesn't get to call anyone reckless."

4S punched him, but lightly.

9S folded his arms over his chest and stared up at the white ceiling. After seeing Adam and Eve, the uneven blocks in different shapes left a sour taste in his mouth, all claustrophobia and bad memories. "I'm not trying to be reckless. I know everyone is… I know you guys need me. But I need answers and I'm tired of waiting for them to come to me."

"Answers, hm…" 4S sighed and dragged his hand up over his face and scratched absently at his hair. "Did you make any progress at least?"

"Purged some consciousness data that wasn't mine. A lot of it, actually."

"_More_ synaptic alignment? With who?"

"…Doesn't matter. They destroyed the data. It's over."

_Did you get anything you actually wanted out of this?_ _Did you do anything that mattered?_

Honestly, it hadn't gone the way he hoped. It wasn't like he expected some big identifiable change right away. Synaptic alignments were subtle—they felt like naturally-generated thought routines and behaviors and that was what made them so insidious to begin with. But purging them was supposed to be different. He'd done exactly what he set out to do, so of course it mattered, but… It dampened something in him to see how little any of it mattered to the reconstructed Adam and Eve. No matter how much damage they had done to him, they were different beings now. Ones that had everything they wanted. They didn't care about the past at all, but they'd still casually snatched the one petty act of revenge 9S could have still enacted on their old iterations.

Success had never felt so unrewarding.

"Look," 4S said, interrupting his thoughts. "You do what you need to, but I'm helping."

"No," 9S answered firmly.

"Don't 'no' me, you need someone to monitor your condition." He retrieved his spear, picked up the pod, and crossed the tunnel to sit out of 9S' reach. "If you want me to go away, prove you can come do it yourself."

9S glared. They both knew if he tried to get up off his bed of carbon, he was going to eat dirt.

"Thought so. Take a maintenance break. I'll handle calibration. You have coordinates for your next move, right?"

"Yeah…" It felt like this was something he should do alone, but he knew better than to argue. "I need to talk to 3S."


	65. Nines

The inner partition of the subnetwork floats like a white lily pad among the towering rushes of the outer network.

Small rooms dot the nostalgic circular path, grouped according to number. Some are locked and the designations appear in solid black over smooth white walls without entry or exit. The rest are open doorways to basic bedrooms that more or less resemble the ones they had before. Most of the occupants have taken the opportunity to clutter their spaces with digital representations of things they'd never have been allowed to keep on the Bunker. There are flowers, stuffed animals, fishbowls… There are even smooth panels that might be posters or mirrors. It's hard to tell; general resolution is too poor for them to have any images on them.

The rooms are in numerical order so he doesn't get too many glimpses of those unexpected eccentricities before he comes to the last of the doors in section 3.

3S sags like a wilted plant at the edge of his bed with a tense, irritable expression that isn't like him. The last thing 9S wants or needs is more of other people's bad news, but he isn't cold or single-minded enough that he can ignore how terrible the other scanner looks. There's no way he can barge in with all his problems.

He knocks first.

3S greets the intrusion with a smile as airy as it is fake. "Ah... Hey, 9S. You need something? Other than updates on 2B, I mean. Cause I don't have any of those."

"I'll find her." The words are a reflex, but not one that conceals any worry or disappointment. Finding her is just that much a certainty in his mind. "I had something else to ask. Is this a bad time?"

3S shrugs and looks at his smooth data-construct bed with something like longing. "It's fine… I just can't sleep in here, you know?"

9S chews the inside of his lip. It's a small, inconsequential thing that wouldn't even register as an issue for anyone else, but 3S' relationship with sleep is infamous.

"I guess…" he offers, at a loss.

3S smiles a little more persistently. "Don't worry about it. What can I do for you?"

The low-resolution manifestation of Cruel Oath looks like any other small sword in this space. He holds it out for 3S to examine. "Can you tell me anything about where I got this?"

3S runs his hands along the shape as he flicks through his interfaces to access the object's data. His face falls and 9S breath stops. There is recognition in the old scanner's eyes.

"Cruel Oath, huh…" 3S sighs and lays it across his lap. "This was the standard issue weapon for combat models in the second generation of the experimental M squad. The last time anyone saw any of them was..."

"Guadalcanal," 9S completes with dry-mouthed awe. He drops to one knee with wide and pleading eyes. The truth is close. He can feel it. "4S told me I went through two orientations. What happened to me, 3S?"

3S shies back from him and avoids meeting his eyes. "I'm just the server admin. All I know is that right before the skirmish where the Number 9 base personality configuration was damaged, you went through the Bunker's data." He pauses. A bittersweet shadow flickers over his face. "You always do."

"You knew the whole time…?"

"That humans were dead? Yeah. Special clearance. Came with the job." That isn't what 9S meant, but 3S doesn't give him the chance to make himself clear. "I didn't know all the rest though. The black boxes and the back door... I had no reason to suspect we were all going to be killed off when R&D was still going so strong and …" He frowns and throws whatever thoughts he has away before anything can come of them. "Well, it doesn't matter now."

"Any information you have," 9S presses. Please, it's all new to me."

"Yeah, that's probably what it's like to be you. Always new, all the time…" 9S can't find it in him to take those words personally. They're too heavy with frustration, and it isn't with him_._ "Everything was chaotic at that time and you in particular… By the time anybody realized there was any cause for concern, it was too late to stop you. You were a like a tornado. You tore through the Bunker's confidential servers then you tried to hack the fusion. Next thing I knew, your personality data was scrambled to hell and I got a quarantine order."

"And I was killed…"

"Yeah." He squints as his mind catches up to what conclusion 9S is suggesting. "It wasn't an execution, though."

Puzzled lines crease 9S' face. "I was killed…but not executed? Did I get cornered by machines?"

"No, just like you thought it was YoRHa. It's like this: Everybody already knew a YoRHa merging with a machine was what caused Guadalcanal. That's the information you were digging around in, not the stuff about Project YoRHa." He rubs absently at his unruly bird's nest of hair. "You were probably in deep shit, but there was no actual execution order for you. The units on the ground requested permission to destroy your body when they found it because…" He waves his hand vaguely. "You know."

"Because there was no way I didn't contract the logic virus?"

"Well yeah that too I guess… but they were more worried about the fusion. Just one YorHa made that monster, and nobody wanted to find out what would happen if the top-shelf scanner got sucked in too."

'Discover the truth about YoRHa and be erased' is what 9S knows and a large part of him has been expecting this inquiry to lead to more of the same. To find instead that the circumstances of his strange first life don't involve humanity or even an execution leaves him unsettled. He had picked through the bunker for information, but _different_ information. His body had been destroyed, but for practical reasons. His first reset had been reactive rather than proactive, and this worries him.

Adam and Eve alone were enough to cause major distortions. Hacking into a fusion of almost eleven thousand machines at once, the first 9S must have experienced an alignment event that was catastrophic. 'Damaged' would have been a loose and very polite term to describe the state of his data after something like that. The prospect is tidy but terrifying in its failure to explain how that data would have gotten back to the Bunker.

Once more, 9S feels himself on the edge of dangerous unknowns. If there is a moment to decide he knows enough, it's now, and he would only be lying to himself if he didn't admit to the temptation to leave the past in the past. But his dogged curiosity helps him swallow his fears. He already knows what he's made of and what he was made for. There cannot possibly be anything worse to know.

"Is there anyone else I could talk to who would have been more involved with my data? Someone on the repair team maybe?"

3S' face contracts all at once as though 9S has punched him. "They're dead. Just like the H units that were on the planet's surface, most of them resisted the infection. Then the Bunker exploded. They're not here."

The momentum of 9S' thoughts collapses all at once. From the pile-up, words he knows he shouldn't say launch out. "That's why 801S isn't here, isn't it…?"

"I just remembered," 3S says, sitting up with worrying nonchalance. "There's one of them here. A unit who was in M002."

He should have expected that. 3S is approachable, but he has never been much for talking past the surface of himself. 9S isn't sure whether to be more sorry or skeptical. "Come on, 3S, I've seen the body storage records. Why would a unit that hasn't been in production for three years be here?"

"Dunno. His memory wasn't all there last I spoke to him. Real reclusive guy, but I'm probably the only face he recognized, so he gave me his unit address. I'll send it to you. Maybe you'll be able to help each other."

"Thanks, 3S. And sorry…for bothering you."

3S leans back onto his bed with some vague assurance that he's fine. Even when he closes his eyes, he looks like he hasn't slept in a thousand years and won't today either.

* * *

9S knows when he finds the YoRHa from M002.

He is built more like 3S than the compact modern scanners—taller and a little broader. He stands at the edge of a T-section, fixated on the distant pillar of light that connects the remains of the network. Déjà vu gusts through 9S. It may be the M unit's bent posture or the familiar, if more professionally sewn, high-collared coat, but to 9S' eyes, he bears a strong resemblance to V.

Reason tells him it must the other way around, but how V could resemble someone he's never met?

"Hello?"

The unit turns. There is a braid down the right side of his short, brown hair. There are no scanners with such a specific aspect to their personal appearance, but something in him insists he has seen that braid and this unit before.

"I'm 9S…" It's odd to be meeting a 'new' YoRHa model. Especially when they are older than him. "Are you the unit who was in the M002 experimental squadron?"

"YoRHa No. 2, Type D." His voice is slow and steady and strangely comforting. "But you probably know that's just a cover designation."

The words strike 9S like a metal beam, knocking away all sense of familiarity and security. The one before him is an Executioner. His palm squeezes around Cruel Oath as it materializes in his hand.

"That's good," 2E says with a short, harmless laugh. "You're not naïve after everything you've experienced."

His tone grates on 9S. It's over-familiar. "What do _you_ know about what I've experienced?"

2E slouches his weight onto one leg. "It's not as though there are any secrets in a place like this. I haven't had much to do but figure out what happened since I was last active."

9S can sympathize with that much, at least. 2E's rollout would have been during the era before Attacker and Gunner models were discontinued in favor of the more all-encompassing Battler types. It's natural for him to seek answers even if he isn't a scanner when he's arrived so far beyond his own time. 9S still doesn't trust him, but answers are more important than the sourness piling in his stomach. All he has to do I spare enough civility to ask his questions and then it can be over.

"3S told me about you," he begins slowly. His stance loosens to show he is of no harm as he draws closer. "He said you might be able to help me."

2E's eyes flick down. Threat response routines flare across 9S' systems and movement triggers his dodge function. When he skids to a stop, 2E stands where he was only a moment ago, unarmed and antiquated, but eyeing 9S like a target.

"The sword," 2E demands.

_The sword? _

The blade of Cruel Oath gleams black and gold in his grip, as fully articulated as if he were holding the physical thing. Dozens of questions bloom into hundreds of hypotheses, but 2E's growing aura of menace is a tall task to ignore even for him. "This is the whole reason I'm here," he blurts, hoping to stem this misunderstanding before it can grow any worse. "I need to know here I got this from!"

"Figure it out fast." 2E shifts his weight and raises his fists. "It's _mine_."

9S has no reason to believe he's lying. He can't—not with the sword having such an obvious response. It must be some sort of resonation based in proximity, similar to the reactions 9S had experienced when approaching units whose consciousness data he'd absorbed. The possibilities are dizzying. Unfortunately, the luxury to examine them closer, in a less prickly situation, is not something he has.

The sword may be the only familiar thing 2E has seen since his resurrection in the ark. Under any other circumstance, 9S would give it to him, executioner or not. But this piece of 2E's past is also the only clue 9S has about his own history.

The moment his grip changes, 2E is on him.

Without a weapon, the executioner is not immediately lethal but he is free to put his entire body to work. He leaves no openings for 9S to try and hack him and refuses to let any meaningful distance form between them. It is clear in every fluid motion that his priority is to get his hands on the sword in the shortest amount of time.

The battle—if it can be called that at all—is brief. It only takes one stumble for 2E to weave around behind 9S and twist his arm up between his shoulders until his sensors scream white pain through his vision. His legs thrash against the textureless platform as he struggles to activate his disconnection protocol. Pressure crushes at his wrist, and his fingers jerk and flex against his will.

As the sword clatters to the path, 2E releases him

9S twists and reaches out despite the flaring protests from his shoulder. Cruel Oath is already in 2E's hands, but he catches the blade in his grip. He can't let him take it. Even if it rightfully belongs to 2E, he cannot let it go.

"Please…" His grip tightens as he wheezes. His gloves split. "Please…!"

There is a brief needle of pain from the sensors in his hands and blood flows down the golden edge.

His face blanks and his mind empties. His desperation is entirely forgotten.

2E hesitates. "9S?"

9S' wide eyes rise to a face that is suddenly more familiar than mere déjà vu can explain. "No. 2…?"

Memories erupt into the network from the point where his body and the sword meet, small and innumerable and filling the air like starlings. 9S doesn't see any of them.

He doesn't have to.

* * *

_The '2B' model coming our way isn't going to save us. Just like No. 2, she is probably an Executioner. One who will properly complete the mission to dispose of us._

_Even though No.2 asked, the Bunker refuses to allow me to delete his data… because it was also part of the experiment. They created us and sent us to fail over and over, decided we would be eliminated, and now at the end even his last request is denied. After he spared us. After he took his own life instead..._

_It's too cruel. _

_I don't know if this feeling inside of me is rage, but when No. 4 and No. 22 suggest that we shouldn't die without a fight, I'm ready to listen._

**_xXx_**

_The idea to fuse with a machine was No. 22's, but I volunteered to be the one to do it. As a Healer, I was always the one to be protected and stay safe. I carried everyone's back up data, so I had to be kept alive at all times if there was any hope the others could be restored._

_I was the only one who couldn't put my life on the line. _

_I was the only one who didn't have to suffer dying and losing myself over and over._

_So I wanted to be the one to take on the risks. We were all on a suicide mission, but if No. 4 and No. 22 were successful, they would raise a whole city of machines and die once. If I was successful, my consciousness would eventually spread out and I would probably die many, many times before YoRHa managed to truly kill me. _

_It was only fair, but I had my own reasons too. _

_I still had the data of all my friends stored inside of me. Maybe I could put them somewhere that not even YoRHa could reach._

**_xXx_**

_I lose control of systems the moment my black box is absorbed. My body is consumed by metal as the logic virus eats it alive, but I willingly leave it behind. Untethered from everything I am safe, but my consciousness is small and lost by the time one hundred machines have fused in. At five hundred, grains of my data start to slip out across all the minds I have been connected to. At five thousand, I start to lose my sense of self. _

_Attacker No. 3. Gunner No. 4. Attacker No 6. Scanner No. 21. Gunner No. 22. _

_I'm sorry._

_Their data loses its shape as my memory falls apart. My body housed all the systems for protecting my memory regions. All I can do is continue to latch on to No.2's sword. The static storage format of a weapon is less susceptible to fragmentation, so I fold what remains of my existence around it and pray. _

_I know the war won't end. I know I'll never read a book by the sea in a peaceful world. I don't need anything like that; just let me hold on to this one thing._

**_xXx_**

_Someone is here. Inside the network with me. A YoRHa unit._

_There are over ten thousand of us joined together now. It's no place for an android. I can feel their consciousness breaking apart. They are fusing in, just like I did. Becoming just another single point of data scattered around. They have to know they will die. So why would they come here?_

_I can feel someone reaching out for me. I can hear someone calling my name._

_Somehow, I organize enough of my disjointed remains to answer._

**_xXx_**

_Our data compresses together, trying in vain to establish some barrier between us and the rest of the fusion. There isn't much of me left, and he is fading fast, but I remember myself as I hold onto him._

_I remember that I was No.9, because he is also No. 9. I remember that I did this reckless thing to cling to something important, because he also did this reckless thing to save something he thought was important. _

_Maybe it's the other YoRHa, who must have been dying over and over again to bring the fusion to an end. _

_I have forgotten the names and faces of the ones I did this for. All I know is the shape of the sword that the last pieces of my consciousness refuse to release. A voice that says goodbye but also that we will meet again. _

_My fleeting consciousness becomes disorganized again. The other No.9 and I melt together in the endless white network, and small but coherent thought routines bounce between us in a rudimentary exchange._

_I'm sorry._

_'I'm so sorry.'_

_I don't want you to die._

_ 'I don't want to let you die.'_

_ I… don't want to die. _

_ 'I didn't come here to die.'_

**_We will not die._**

* * *

9S wakes slowly. No.2 is kneeling over him. The golden line of Cruel Oath rests at his hip.

"Seven brothers…" 9S mumbles, his mind flinging old data about the sword forward in an effort to enforce sense on his otherwise disorientated state. "Seven brothers with a traitor among them... That was about M002. That was about… you."

"No. 9? Is it really…?"

There is enough hope in his whisper to crush 9S.

"I'm not No.9." It's a terrible half-truth, because he is logging the strands that comprise this not-stranger's braid and he already knows what number he should come to. A dozen phantom images of him shift like shadows at the corners of 9S' memory. An expanse of emotions and experiences that do and don't belong to him fight to be the first out of some secret partition inside of him, finally found and finally open.

"We were… in pieces. Everything was in pieces. But there was enough of me… of us? Of 9S—to use the bunker's back door. We wrote over the personality data with the mess of what we were, so that YoRHa would have no choice… Erase their most advanced scanner and start over, or salvage us."

He can see so much evidence now that he hears it aloud. Prioritizing 2B's data every time without fail even when he didn't know her. Insisting on repair of even the slightest, most insignificant injury even though he often overdid it. These were Healer unit's habits, left somewhere so deep in his consciousness data that it was just a ripple on the surface.

What extent of the original 9S he embodied he might never really know. All he has is an impression of someone whose only choices were to find out what would make another No.9 cause so much chaos or utterly lose his mind. Someone who couldn't stand for anyone to be pointlessly thrown away. 9S thinks that he and No. 9 may be a little more selfish than that. Or, given the way the other scanners talked about him, maybe the original 9S was just the only one between the three of them who had remained alone.

He'd never known 2B.

_She'd_ never known the original 9S.

She'd never known him to be any other way than he was now—the reconstructed personality that his predecessors had become when they refused to die. 'He' has never existed without her, and all the messy and contradictory things he feels for her are indisputably his own.

No. 2 holds out his hand and 9S gladly accepts the help. The air is clear and silent. The memories have all flown away.

"You can keep the sword," says No. 2.

9S almost laughs. It feels like they were fighting for it a lifetime ago. "I don't need it anymore. I got what I was looking for."

"So did I." He holds up a hand and there is a cut across his glove. "No.9 couldn't delete my data… so he hid it in the sword's storage system. Then one of you compressed it and hid it a place no one would look."

"My NFCS base protocol," 9S says with a prideful smile. "Which was conveniently set to 'off' when I was rebooted as a modern Scanner."

"Crafty."

"Of course, the old 9S was top of the line too, you know." He can tell by No.2's expression that his immodesty would not have been characteristic of No.9. As it should be—he isn't No. 9, after all. "Are you sure you want me to have it?"

"You carried it all this time. Besides, the war's over." A smile pulls familiar creases into being beneath No. 2's eyes. "And now I know why I came back in a place like this. It was to meet you."

No. 2 doesn't have 2B's face, but he is similar enough for the words to tie 9S' black box up in flustered ribbons. "W-well. Most likely you came back because some part of your consciousness data fractured off into the fusion and has been floating around in the machine network this whole time. I had a similar thing happen to me where my consciousness spontaneously regenerated as linked fragments across a local machine network and after finding out we run on machine cores there's a really high probability that we were always capable of doing things like this but the logic virus contamination risk kept the possibilities from being explored properly and—"

"9S," No.2 interrupts quietly. "Even though you're not the No. 9 I knew. I'm glad… that you didn't die."

There is a gentleness in his gaze that matches the occasional glimpse that 2B would clumsily show, only No.2 doesn't bother to hide it. Their time together was short, but No. 2 and No. 9 were probably at least as close as 9S and 2B had been…

9S looks out over the edge of the T-section, where he'd found No.2 standing. His eyes widen, and a flutter of laughter escapes him. No. 2 looks at him like he might be a bit unstable, but he has never been more clear-headed.

"I know where she is," he says breathlessly. "I know where 2B is!"

* * *

"You gonna be okay from here?"

9S nodded and grumbled a weak thank you to 4S for practically carrying him back to the camp.

"No problem. It's gonna take me a while to calculate the coordinates and calibrate the pod. I won't tell Iota about the state you're in or how long you were in the network but in exchange, you are gonna get in bed and power down for at least six hours. No exceptions."

As the door to the private room swung open and the bright winter daylight yielded to the cool darkness, 9S found he couldn't imagine anything better. There was no powering through the kind of headache he had.

Virtuous Contract was right where he left it across the empty, unused second bed beyond the bookcases and plain, wooden table in the center of the toom. The bed 2B once used.

4S took one look at it and patted him on the back. "See you in the morning, Nines."

The door closed with a polite click. 9S sat and stared at his white reflection in the blade. Humans had dozens, maybe even hundreds of sayings about knowing yourself or finding yourself. For androids, the concept was redundant. One personality might differ from another, but every android had a role and a purpose and that was all the self-knowledge they needed. 9S was not most androids. He was YoRHa, and his existence was the logical extreme of YoRHa's practices. The fractal of his many lives repeated in their own image down to whatever iteration he was, and he thought this one human thing he understood perfectly. Knowing what had happened to his first self gave him a direct and traceable line through his past. It wouldn't have been important to any of the previous versions of him. They had a war to fight and 2B to be with and when they found out the truth they never had to carry it for very long.

Knowing where he and Cruel Oath came from did so much more than give him a sense of control over himself. It gave him a sense of direction. Made him feel less like a lone point and more like a dotted line.

And if 2B had really left all her memories, inside of Virtuous Contract was where 9S would find the means to make that line solid.

Slowly, he tugged his gloves off and let them fall to the floor. His one finger was still sort of misshapen due to the improper maintenance, but his hands were otherwise pristine. He'd sliced them a dozen times carrying Virtuous Contract around, but nothing had ever happened. It had to be a part of him. He had to carry it with him into the network, where everything was just data that could merge and blend as easily as the barriers between two digital objects could be broken down.

In the case of a weapon, breaking that barrier was apparently as easy as being cut.

The sword dissipated into a swirl of golden-white sparks and integrated into his NFCS. By the time he opened his read-out and found the bright orange indicator for new data, it was already back in his hands, resting easily on his lap. It ached a bit that this was how he had to learn, but he took it all in. Her uncertainty. Her doubts.

Underneath that cold exterior, she was always asking herself how much more she could take.

He held the sword close to his body and let himself sag gently onto the stiff mattress. There was no scent. It surprised him a little that it even crossed his mind to look for one. 2B was an android and it had been… almost a year since she used this bed. As he curled up with his knees nearly to his chin, he thought of her voice coming from the tinny speaker of a broken flight unit on the ruined coastline. Of her calling him Nines and referring to their time together as pure light.

He closed his eyes.

I'll see you soon, 2B…


	66. Hanged Man

V told me a story today.

It was while I was patching one of my gloves with spare leather from my cloak. He wanted something that would meet his sleeves and fully cover his arm. Griffon was giving him a hard time, crowing in disbelief that V was actually going to use his head and make a plan for once. Maybe he had finally gotten tired of living by the seat of his pants? V just shrugged and said he was perfectly capable of forethought when the situation called for him to hedge his bets.

Griffon was skeptical. So was Pod 042. So was I, but I wasn't as vocal about it as either of them.

The story he told me was of where he came from and where he intended to go. I didn't want to hear it. I didn't need to know. But he told me it was important that I listen carefully, so I did.

He said he wasn't from this world. That where he came from humans were alive and thriving. There had never been machines or androids or aliens there, only demons who had their own world but regularly encroached on that of humans. He didn't say it plain, but implied demons were more or less predators, only humans were less a means of survival and more of power. Demons fed on blood to get stronger, and if they couldn't get it from other demons, humans made easier prey.

It sounded like a terrible place to me, but if humans were flourishing, how bad could it be? Maybe the humans there were strong, the way V was. Maybe they were a hardier kind of human that would take a lot more than aliens or machines to kill off.

To think, I'd been sitting in my shack imagining just one human when there was a whole world of them out there somewhere.

He told me he didn't need anything as specific as blood, which seemed… obvious to me. It wasn't like there was any human blood around but his. What he did require was magic. His body was only human as long as he had enough to keep it in that shape.

With my throat locking up, I clumsily asked if he was hiding another shape under the tattoos. I think I was trying to make a joke, but he didn't look particularly impressed by it and answered that he didn't have another shape. When he went without magic, or when his familiars used too much, he simply crumbled.

I stopped thinking about it and listened to him tell me about the gods.

He told me of their maso that had turned the humans of my world to salt and caused their extinction. How it fed into his body over the passing months; strengthened him but also poisoned him without his notice. He'd thought it harmless until he nearly burned the park down.

He didn't say he was a demon. Just that wasn't human enough to be fully turned to salt. Just that the gods could use his body as a conduit. Through him, they could reach the demon world, where they would be dangerously close to another world full of living humans that they could invade as they'd invaded this one. That was the world V wanted to return to, but he could not go back carrying the maso in his veins.

He needed to kill the gods. He needed power.

"Which you have helped me attain," he finished, flexing his hand experimentally inside the glove when I was done.

From him that was praise, but I found it hard to focus on. I don't know what I was thinking, only that I was afraid. He was telling me something important, telling me more than I thought he ever would, but my mind was stuck on everything his story implied.

"You'll always be human to me."

I thought they were kind words. I wanted to offer him comfort.

There was no way I would have predicted my attempt would earn such a cold, scathing glare. I didn't understand the pride he had in what he was—in whatever measure of human or demon made him V.

"If you would insist on remaining blind," he said disdainfully. "You might consider removing your eyes."

* * *

V told me a story today.

It was while he was standing high up on top of the parapets. The dragon's power moved and weaved around him. I couldn't see it, but I could feel it on the air, like a change in atmospheric pressure. After he was properly rested, he manipulated it like that almost constantly. Practicing, I guess. Not like he needed it. I wasn't an expert on dragon powers, but as far as I could tell, he handled them like they were as familiar as his cane.

He'd had a long talk with Pod 042 in private, so I was expecting the worst, but the story he told me was about 9S and about YoRHa.

I grew hot and fidgeted. Mumbled some excuse that I didn't need to know. But he told me this was also an important story, so I did my best to listen even as my mind clouded with images of androids I knew and didn't know.

The subject of the machine research report was not a surprise to me. YoRHa existed so androids could lie to themselves. Big deal. They were no different than the shadows I would watch on the walls of the shack, ghosts I made with my own hands so my own dreams would be a little more real. The only thing that made any difference was that I had never tried to make the shadows real. And I had never tried to convince anybody, including myself, that my dream was anything more than just that.

Even the dream of being with V was like that. This was the most he'd ever spoken to me, and I knew it meant our time was about to come to an end. Maybe that was why even though I didn't hate YoRHa, I couldn't feel any pity for them when he said there was still a protocol in place to erase them entirely.

They had been made with the explicit purpose of dying to bring a fantasy to life. But so were the rest of us. We were all born to die for beings that had been dead thousands of years before most of us were even stepping off of assembly. There was never anything at the end. Not approval or disappointment or victory or defeat. Whether YoRHa had succeeded or not, whether android-kind won the war or lost it, we had all been made for nothing and nothing was all we would get.

It would have been a mercy to die for all but two of us lucky enough to be gifted something.

I got gratitude and I was happy for it. The sound of V's 'You've done well' spoken to me and only me in the dark tunnels underground would stay with me for the rest of my life. Didn't matter whether that was a very short or very long time. Those words were more than I'd ever hoped for and strangely helped me accept the idea that V was from another time and place. It was beyond a world like this one to offer that much of a miracle to anyone without outside influence, so it was natural he would come from a different one.

9S got… something else.

I don't think V knew how obvious it was. He framed his story as a matter of owing the kid something, but it only made the tightness in my chest worse. So 9S misdirected the investigation to keep the other androids off V's trail. So he told the army of humanity some lie about V being an old world weapon. So he told the resistance members who had seen V he wasn't YoRHa. So what. 9S kept his secret, but so had I. From a distance, for months and months and months without him ever knowing. I abandoned my post, fought demons with him, took care of him when he had almost died, carried him on my back through the desert, killed other androids. I had done everything 9S did and more.

"Theta was built to keep heritage," said V. "If she's already been told I'm a thing of the old world, I only have to make her believe it."

I nodded, but I'd heard very little of what he said. All I gathered was that V wanted 9S to walk free of both the camp and the need to hide V's existence. Even if he wanted to give me something like that, I was a criminal. I knew what my fate was already.

Suddenly I was very unsatisfied with it.

I hated 9S. I hated him in a way that had nothing to do with the sickly feeling I got when I was near him. If it was what V wanted, then of course I would do it, but I didn't want to be of use just for the sake of that spoiled boy who already had everything an android could want.

"Do you understand?"

V probably didn't remember the last time he stood in that spot with his tattoos swaying in the wind like they might become wings and he might fly away at any moment. They were settled against his skin now. He was just a man. But he felt further away from me than ever.

"…I understand."

A human's favor existed in this world, but there was nothing I could do to obtain it.

* * *

V told me a story today.

It was after we came down from the ramparts. He sat in the high, crumbled window of the throne room and gestured his cane to the empty space at his side.

He never invited me so close to him. Begrudgingly permitted it, yes, but never made a request of it. The sill wasn't cramped it was still a shared space and my motor control went a little floaty as I moved toward him. Somehow, I managed to sit without embarrassing myself. Beside me, his expression was neutral. There was no slight knit of his brow or impatient tilt at the corner of his mouth. Aside from a slight distance as he turned some subject over in his mind, he was completely at ease.

He didn't have to tell me that the story was important or to listen carefully. I was hyperaware of every single thing I could extract from that moment. I counted his eyelashes. Noted the exact shade of green his eyes appeared with his face in shadow. Memorized the cadence and pitch of his voice. The precise angle of the light, the position of the clouds, the number of stones around us, the distant hiss of the falls and the cooing of doves somewhere nearby. I logged all of those things from where he had finally invited me to sit beside him.

It was a really good last memory.

Or a really good first impression, since the story V told me was about me.

'Fern' didn't resist much. None of my false identities ever did. I was always a mess by the time I decided to erase my memories so every wipe was a sloppy job that left them vulnerable to the truth. Fern had been smart enough to get it in her head that she didn't want too much information. She probably would've lasted if she hadn't managed to stumble on a human of all the damned things. But there he was laying out the truth, and Fern fell away to the same place as Ivy before her and Ruby before her and on and on and on.

"That's enough."

V met my eyes and I didn't look away. His mouth twitched and I spotted a hint of approval that would've made Fern feel invincible. All I felt was a bit giddy, but then 'I' was meeting V for the first time.

"Good morning, 8E." The sound of my designation was like a burst of unpleasant feedback in my head. "Have your memories returned?"

"Down to the last detail." I sank back against the stones. "So... You need help killing the gods right?"

"You cannot assist me with that."

"You sure? It's what I'm good at. Wait, let me guess." I saw my too-wide smile reflected in his eyes and drew my legs up to hide the way my hands were starting to shake. The pressure of my memories catching up with me wrung my nerves into frayed threads. "There's someone you want me to kill in the camp. Is it Theta? That'd be pretty exciting, I've never been ordered to kill a superior officer before."

"As of this moment, I don't need you to kill anyone."

"Well, that's a waste!" A pitching laugh spread a dozen cracks through my voice. "It's what I do! I get close to people and I kill them! If you didn't need me to do that, then why am I even here?!"

"How melodramatic," he said, staring darkly down his nose without a shred of sympathy. "I told you what I needed. Did you not understand? Or were you merely not listening?"

My chest burned. Fern was the one who hadn't been listening, but I was the one who had to deal with that exasperated look. "I listened! But it's all… fuzzy. Almost like I'm a little bit _overwhelmed_ right now."

"Then I will say it simply. I have a goal that can only be accomplished by entering the android camp and you are my bargaining chip."

"That's pretty cold," I half-joked. "And risky. I could always just tell them about you."

He smirked, and though I'd seen the expression before, it felt new. The urge to slap him was definitely new. "If I believed you actually would, this conversation would be different."

I clenched my eyes, but all I saw in the dark was all the friends and lovers and allies I had put down like animals. Even escaping into being Fern had not freed me from them. I knew every single one, whether they had names or not. Now, not only was I their murderer; I was a monster who had been hiding the heart of a machine the whole time. And it was all for nothing. I killed them all for nothing_,_ and because this world had the worst sense of humor ever, I was the one who got to live in spite of the YoRHa's expiration date having come and gone.

I was used to being volatile when I woke up, but usually that meant systemic damage that got me hauled back to the Bunker. This time I had awakened to a reality in which YoRHa didn't exist, had been designed to stop existing, and in its place was one pitiless human.

It was so absurd. It was so _unfair_. I wanted to die. I wanted to kill 9S. I wanted to kill everyone.

_Except for V._ **Especially V.**

"You do realize," I rumbled. "That I'm a total stranger to you, right?"

"That was the point of all this, yes." He leaned comfortably back, watching me with no sense of tension or urgency. "You would find out you were YoRHa in the camp. Why leave it to chance when I could deal with it ahead of time? You've received a wealth of knowledge, and now I will know beforehand what you choose to do with it."

Like Fern, I didn't really have any hard feelings about being turned in. The more I thought on it, the more I was relieved by the prospect. I hoped they took me apart piece by piece while I was still conscious, then I could at least die knowing the world had some kind of justice in it. V was allowing me the room to make a move that I didn't even need.

So it confused me that I filled up with that same glowing sense of peace that had always dazzled Fern. There was no mistaking it. It was like someone had flushed my filters with liquid sunlight. I flipped my legs out over the drop to the outer courtyard so I wouldn't have to look at him. The clouds were just feathers against the pale blue sky and early spring heat soaked into my face, warming me outside just as I had warmed inside.

"Now who's being melodramatic?" I muttered. "You never asked Fern what she wanted to do."

"Fern did not want anything half so much as she wanted to be of use to me." He cocked his head at me. "Are you so alike I should treat you the same?"

So he did recognize that I was the one who had all the memories of him while he didn't know anything about who I was as 8E. He just didn't let it get in the way of assuming he had me figured out. "And if I want something that inconveniences your plan?"

"You should know best." He folded his hands over the top of his cane. "I'll do what I must."

Again, I felt that wash of warmth. I could do whatever I wanted. He would do whatever he had to. A tingle crawled over my skin and my core temperature spiked as I considered he might even be willing to kill me.

I licked my lips and propped a leg up on the sill, half-turning back to him. "Let me ask you something, V. When did you know?"

"Before we ever spoke." The cane flicked up and pointed just below my throat. "You give off a black box signal."

"No, I mean did you know I was an E the whole time?"

"Pod informed me during your first maintenance."

"And you didn't…" I made a sour face at the sparse grass below. The words felt pathetic because Fern couldn't be blamed for how much weight was resting on the answer. "You didn't despise me?"

"If I had that much time and energy to waste, I would never have needed you to begin with."

I sighed. What had I even been expecting? "So you just make it a habit to treat people like you treated Fern? Congrats, that actually makes me feel a little bad for the scanner."

"He's not foolish enough to worship me as Fern did."

There was a lightness to those words made me look his way. He was smiling. Only by a few centimeters, but he'd never smiled like that at Fern even once so the subtlety of it didn't do a damned thing to hide it.

Honestly, I was jealous, but 9S had been with V for at least half a year and it was natural that he'd be warmer with him. That wasn't what left my fingers crunching into the stones. It was how _proud_ he sounded. V always said he had no interest in being god, and I had to give him credit for matching his actions to his words at every turn, but the thing was: it didn't matter what he said. In this world, he was the designated deity whether he wanted to be or not, because that was how we had all been built_._ For him to be so pleased with the one who wasn't operating as intended—that was like having a knife twisted into my back.

"_That's_ what you were so hung up on?" I laughed, but it was a sound as dull and ugly as the rusted corpses of the machines. "What a shock. You're so prissy I'd have thought you loved the service."

"There was also the matter that Fern was just the latest personification of your cowardice."

"You think I had a choice?"

"Enough to cling to escapism so strongly that even your façade chose to live within fantasies."

"You don't know shit about androids," I spat, turning my glare back down to the courtyard. "Or about YoRHa."

We were puppets. There was no choice for any of us, much less an executioner. Natural progression meant going slowly and quietly insane. We snatched what little reprieve or relief we could get away with to stave it off like rats gnawing on dry bone to stave off starvation, but we knew the whole time it would eventually catch up with us. It always did.

In our programming, self-termination was a condemnation to hell in the same way the touch of humanity was an invitation to heaven. To give up and die was a sin so great that no amount of suffering could ever pile high enough to justify it. I killed myself a dozen little ways instead. Erasing my own memories, taking on enemies I couldn't possibly expect to defeat. A few times, in the beginning, I tried to rip out the components that generated emotion. None of it mattered. No matter what I chose, eventually I was made to do exactly as I had before.

To Fern, V was something divine and if he bothered to take note of her existence at all, it was a miracle. Understandably, I wasn't quite as enamored. The bottom line was that he intended to use me. I didn't care since I deserved the punishment, but the trouble was in him leaving the next move in my hands. The element of chance. I had the opportunity to make things go the way I wanted them to.

A hint of faded green glinted in my periphery as the light found his eyes. He was watching me.

"What?" I grouched.

"I am waiting."

I shook my head and laughed through my nose. For a guy who didn't care about being god, he sure acted like he was king of the fucking castle.

Maybe because we looked so much like humans, he just took it for granted that we must be like humans. He had no idea what a novel situation he had created. In his eyes, he had no actual authority over me at all so the solution to just ask me what I intended to do and deal with it probably seemed reasonable to him. So, he just sat there waiting.

For my decision.

"Whatever you need."

"I see." Sure he did. "Perhaps you're not so different from your other self."

I spun myself back around into the throne room and laughed at his expense. "And _perhaps_ you got a little too accustomed to having someone around whose only goal was to kiss your bony ass. Your plans are already going my way, V. As long as I end up in the camp, I'll do whatever you need."

He gauged me with fresh annoyance, and I let him without any sense of shame. What he had done wasn't a conscious kindness and it didn't mean anything to him. But that didn't make it less of a gift, especially to someone like me.

Not that I'd tell him that. The cluelessness was growing on me.

He twisted the cane around in his fingers. "…Fine. Shall we make sure you know your part?"

"Fern wasn't listening," I admitted easily. "Just tell me that whole story again. This time I'll point out the parts that'll definitely get us killed."


	67. Power Play

**A/N: Busy this weekend, so enjoy this chapter a little early. **

* * *

The door slammed open so hard it nearly exploded into splitters against the concrete wall.

9S yelped and floundered off the bed, almost splitting himself in two on Virtuous Contract while 4S shouted at him to come quick over the sound of Jackass cursing so loud her speakers were on the verge of blowing out.

His drowsy mind chugged, throwing out a dozen possibilities as he stumbled into the overcast day. Machines? Another demon attack? Theta and Jackass finally getting in the fight that had been brewing between them since he first saw them? Above the ring of androids blocking his view of the commotion, he spotted a giant blue bird cackling from atop the shoulder of an exceptionally tall android.

Information overload slowed his thought routines to a crawl.

It was V. He was in the camp. Anthurium was with him. So was 8E. Her hands were tied up with ropes. Jackass was yelling at Griffon. Griffon was laughing at Jackass. Anemone was standing beside Jackass, half preventing her from doing anything rash and half trying to take in this latest weird thing to happen in her camp. Theta stood face to face with V. 9S couldn't quite put an emotion to her expression. V was giving her the same flat, dead-eyed stare she usually reserved for everyone else. It would have been enjoyable to see her get a taste of her own medicine if the mere fact of V's presence was not rapidly causing 9S to overheat.

As if overhearing this sizzle of his circuits, V turned his way. The crowd parted. If 9S hadn't been frozen in place before, he would have been by the sudden hush and the way the camp's eyes fell on him. They all watched him as he and V watched each other.

Except for Theta, whose eyes never left V for a second. "Old World Weapon, hm?"

"That is what I said, yes." V sounded relaxed. Like he'd been well fed and had a good night's sleep, and nobody had woken _him_ up out of a pleasant sleep into a scene right out of a nightmare. "Shall we speak in private or did you wish to do business in front of this…tribe."

"9S," Gamma barked, making him nearly jump out of his skin. "You'll be joining us."

Anthurium swayed nervously between V and Gamma. "Do I need to come?"

"I'll handle it," Anemone said, with a stern look at the two Army androids. "Just don't leave in case we need you."

The table it would be handled at, when they were all finally settled around it, was deathly silent.

V sat at one end, spinning his cane and looking around the camp like it was a novelty toy in a broken-down storefront. Something for his eyes to peruse, but ultimately useless to him. Gamma sat directly to his left, radiating the threat of violence with her entire body only for it to bounce ineffectually off V's complete lack of interest in her. 8E sat quietly to her left. She was… different. She paid 9S' occasional quizzical glares no mind and seemed content to sit there in the embarrassingly primitive restraints that bound her arms and wrists. Theta sat next to her, at the opposite head of the table from V. A tactically sound choice, as far as possible from V while leaving him the center of her focus. They knew the threat that 8E posed, but V was an unknown. 'Old World Weapon' was a broad term and he could be capable of anything.

That left Anemone and 9S sitting together on V's right like repair units hunkering down on the edge of a soon-to-be battlefield. She occasionally shot him enquiring and slightly panicked glances, but he could only give her bug-eyed, jittery headshakes for an answer.

Careful to not direct his question too obviously at V, he parted the dense silence. "Anybody wanna catch me up on what's going on here?"

"Your friend wants to arrange a trade," said Theta. "YoRHa Unit No. 8, Type E in exchange for the weapon you recovered from the desert."

"Okay…? So let him take it. You want your culprit, there she is. What's the problem?"

Surprisingly, Anemone was the one to shoot him down. "I'd say the problem is that we killed a full squadron of dead YoRHa and that sword had something to do with it."

"There's that. And the matter of whether he is an accomplice to 8E, as well as the veracity of the claim that he is an old world weapon, which I am bound by Legacy Reclamation protocol to verify and catalog." Theta folded her hands beneath her chin. It might have been mistaken for a casual gesture if her joints did not crack so loudly. "Let's start with why you want the sword."

Griffon snorted from his perch above them. "We're doin' you a favor, trust me it's not every day we bother to be diplomatic; kinda the long way 'round if you catch my meaning. But sure, sure, keep it, it'll bring you good fortune sure as I'm the bluebird of fuckin' happiness."

8E sat forward with a sigh. "What the dumb bird means is that the sword belongs to V and if you keep it, it's only going to cause more problems for you."

"I don't remember permitting you to speak."

"Glad your memory checks are functional. You're not my Commander, I don't need your permission to talk about this."

"About _what__, _exactly?"

"About Legion," said V.

The beginnings of all other petty exchanges blew away, leaving a hush far more oppressive than the last.

9S' connection to his sensors shorted and for a moment he floated away from the table, his thought routines untethered from the rest of him. This was not how today was supposed to go. If V lost whatever game he was playing by being here, 9S might never get the chance to find 2B's data. Faced with that prospect, he snapped back into himself and shot V a look that begged mercy and threatened murder.

V leaned his cane against his mouth to hide the twitch of a grin.

Across from them, Theta set her hands on the table and leaned forward like an encroaching glacier. "Legion is dead. They've been dead for thousands of years."

"Yet here am I and there…" V trailed, waving the tip of his cane until it pointed beyond the obscuring tarp, toward the back area of the camp. "…is my sword."

"What do either of those things have to do with Legion?"

Griffon bounced down to a lower perch on the back of V's chair and spread his wings. "V here is an anti-maso weapon. We keep that salty shit purged and make sure nobody wakes up another Red-Eye. Me? Oh, glad you asked! I'm his entourage since as you can tell he's not much physically after so many thousands of years, kind of an old-timer, you know? Someone's gotta take good care of the brittle bits."

V pushed the head of his cane up underneath Griffon's jaw to force it closed before he could make any more opportunistic jabs. "So it is. The sword captures maso and ensures that it stays… indisposed. The supposedly resurrected YoRHa you faced were mere maso-driven pawns drawn toward it."

"No," Theta said tightly, shaking her head. "No, no, Legion was a result of _human_ contact with maso, and they were white and—" She was halfway up before she caught herself, and her fingers gouged the wood as she forced herself back into her seat. For the first time since they sat, she broke eye contact with V.

"Ваше мнение?" she asked Gamma.

9S twitched as his language functions stuttered to life. It had never even occurred to him that Theta's group might have a different default operational language than the one used in this zone. Even if it had, he would never have imagined he'd find himself in a situation where it was a problem.

"_He isn't dead,"_ Gamma answered. "_Iota couldn't get readings because he's not an android. Whether he is old world or not, he is organic."_

_"How is that possible?!"_

_"He may be like No. 7 before his merger with No. 6. Similar form to replicants, ability to use magic, seemingly infinite longevity…"_

_"All of the anti-maso weapons were made from children; this is an adult!"_

If V cared that they were talking in a language he didn't know, it didn't show, but he really needed to. Theta and Gamma were not like the androids he was used to, and while he sat there looking so unbothered they were dangerously close figuring him out. The only reason they weren't coming to the right conclusion was because the truth happened to be the least rational thing possible.

Their sidebar ended, and Gamma leered at V. "I request permission to interrogate."

"Denied," Theta answered. "You're an Enforcer, save interrogation for the executioner. If V is what he says he is, he is an artifact. Intel gathering is more prudent, especially given he's…organic."

"Not fully." V gave that smug, secretive look that made the back of 9S' neck crawl. "I have a bad habit of turning to dust when my power is depleted."

He had clearly reached deep inside and pulled out the most insolent, unaffected version of himself he could find—one that considered all of this a courtesy that could become an annoyance at any time. Theta's sharp, predatory gold eyes locked with his bored-looking green ones, and the air took on a buzz as tangible as metal striking metal.

"Where've you been all this time?" she demanded.

"Dormant." V leaned back in his chair and loosely crossed his legs. "In Jerusalem."

"No.7 has been sighted in many combat zones, but you've never appeared before, even in skirmishes in that area."

"His name is _Emil_." His tone fell over them like a thundercloud with every suggestion that further 'No.7's would invite lightning. 9S didn't think it sounded like an act, but since when was V defensive of Emil? "I haven't bothered in the affairs of androids since the celebrant. Your wars have nothing to do with me."

"Clearly not, since you decided to show up after the end of it. Legacy Reclamation has no record of you."

"Don't you have boy-bot out here digging up your lost history for you?" Griffon cawed. "Your records ain't shit!"

Theta's gaze flicked sideways and bored into 9S.

He didn't know what to do with himself at this juncture. Should he look bored, so it looked like he knew all this? Should he do his best to achieve direct communication with V's brain just to ask him what the fuck he was doing? Should he just look nervous? He could definitely do nervous. At least two dozen extremely nuanced varieties of nervous were already fully loaded and ready to go, from the sucking void of terror just under his ribs to the prickling flight urge creeping from his toes up the back of his legs all the way to where his fingers were hooked and ready to overturn the table and run if this all went bad.

The only thing he knew he couldn't do was let his body shake as badly as it wanted to. V's lie was good_._ Almost _too _good. He could do magic, so how was anybody supposed to know that it wasn't technically this world's magic? He even hid the existence of demons under a different kind of monster; one Theta would never be able to ignore.

But why now? Why like this?

"Why now?" Theta echoed, startling him. "Why here?"

"You complain that you fought corpses and can't figure out why I would appear in this time and place?"

Theta ground her jaw. "I mean how long have you been here?"

"The rounds of the clock run together... The turn of autumn was it, 9S?"

9S choked on the sudden attention from every eye at the table. "S… September. 19 September 11945, approximately 2:00 PM. That was first contact."

"You're a better liar than I gave you credit for." Despite her obvious skepticism, there was a brightness to Theta's eyes. A thrilled astonishment. All the boredom and disappointment she'd shown or claimed toward him was gone. Her expectations, whatever they were, had suddenly been met. Her voice modulation lost its usual control and her words shivered as she spoke. "This is what you were really trying to hide all this time."

9S directed a silent cry for help to V, who gave a self-satisfied chuckle. "At my request, yes."

"Dressing like a YoRHa unit was a flashy choice if you wanted to hide."

"Plain-sight camouflage often is." He twirled his cane in the slow, thoughtful way that typically preceded the end of a machine's life on its point. "It was the safe choice for much longer than I expected. The relationship between androids and their YoRHa creations is quite… **fascinating**_._"

The word rumbled off his tongue in just the right way to shed light on the full intensity of the contempt beneath his calm features. They didn't know he was human. There was no reason for that judgment to strike home with them, but it did. 9S watched the ripple of it pass through Theta, Gamma, and even Anemone. It gave 9S a moment to consider something he'd never had the opportunity to while in the company of other androids.

V was eerie.

It wasn't his crooked, bony body or the cane or even his weird way of speaking but something innate and uncanny and un-androidlike that permeated him. He gave off a feeling that he was exactly where he needed to be, doing exactly what he needed to do. That lack of aimlessness was increasingly rare among androids. He must've known it, too—it was obvious he was wearing how strange he was on his shoulder. The only frame of reference 9S or any of the other androids in this area would have for behavior like his was Emil. Whether that was a lucky convenience or an intended implication that V was playing on was impossible to say.

"Prove it."

Attention at the table went to Theta. The tension around her had lessened. Her request was simple, unemotional, and accompanied by her usual mirthless stare.

"That I'm a weapon?" V purred, and 9S thought he was going to faint. V had that glimmer in his eye that only appeared when he was about to take a swing at something dangerous and find out the hard way whether or not he was in over his head.

"That maso is back," Theta clarified. "Whether you're a weapon or not, the purging of maso was thousands of years ago, and now you're trying to tell me that it wasn't successful. I want _proof._"

"Hold on," 9S interjected. "How is he supposed to prove that?"

"It was his mission to deal with it," she said coolly, folding her hands atop the table and staring expectantly at the black-clad figure on the opposite side. "I'm sure he can figure it out."

Pride. The one thing that might out-class reason in this situation. Theta was a member of Legacy Reclamation, but she was herself a kind of legacy. Android heritage had personal meaning for her. What V was suggesting was that android kind had failed yet another of the missions left to it by humanity. Even if they were all dead, she wasn't going to let that be the truth unless V could produce tangible evidence.

9S swallowed and aimed an urgent glower at 8E, only to be horrified when he found her glaring back at him in search of similar assurance.

V's remained impenetrable beneath his hooded eyes right until he planted his cane in a crack and stood. "Fine."

Across the table, 8E wriggled in her chair. A shimmer appeared in the air around V, first in red, then in the bright violet that 9S associated with V's magic. But something wasn't right. Sweat gathered on his skin. His expression pinched like he was in pain and he had to plant both his hands on the table just to keep himself upright while his head dropped forward between his shoulders. The shimmer faded. Nothing happened, but V made a rough, pained noise that triggered a blind panic from deep in 9S' protocols.

_Help him help him help himhelphimhelphimhelp—!_

8E stood from her seat, and 9S saw the exact same panic in the way she pushed toward V in spite of Gamma's vise grip threatening to tear her arm off. "V, are you—"

His back bowed out in a single violent jolt.

Pure white salt spewed across the table, hissing like a sandstorm and spraying as far as Theta's folded hands before she jumped back. They all did, save 9S himself. He had seen the salt before, but never the actual expulsion. V had done it on command. Did that mean he had control of it? Or was he just that familiar with the condition?

He reached out and laid his hand carefully between V's shivering shoulders. "…You didn't have to do that."

"Yes," V coughed, avoiding his gaze. "I did." He sank heavily back into his seat. The salt had clearly taken something out of him, but he swept his hair clear of his face and stared high-headedly at Theta. "What else would suffice for proof but the very substance that devoured mankind?"

Theta started like she'd forgotten V was there. Her eyes jumped between V and the salt and all their faces, and she seemed suddenly no different than any of the resistance members. A lost android with no idea what to do with herself or any of the information that had been presented.

"How…" she breathed in a dry whisper.

"Maso."

"So it's not gone… And now… it's made androids into Legion?"

V shrugged.

"It's machines too," 8E offered.

Theta and Gamma snapped their ravenous attentions to her. V had made his point and checked out, so they were willing to take answers wherever they could.

"The day of the amusement park fire there was a Legion outbreak in the ravine," she explained. "V patched me up and a few days later we went down there and killed them all. It was mostly machines. The heads, bouncing around, rolling up the cliff faces…"

"And that's when you began traveling with him?" Gamma probed.

"Yeah. He said there might be more and that he needed my assistance. That's really the long and short of it."

Anemone leaned forward over the table, parting Theta and Gamma's tension with her own razor-sharp intent. "Why did you pretend to be a normal android?"

8E's level expression melted like wax, but she didn't allow herself to look away from her former pseudo-commander. "During the final descent mission, I tried to delete my memory. I've only remembered my designation in the last 12 hours. I'm sorry to say it, but I've been in your camp before and this was probably the first time I _wasn't_ pretending."

"You didn't remember that you were YoRHa?" Gamma scoffed. "How convenient."

"It matches," said 9S. He sagged back into his seat and let his hands clasp beneath the salt-covered table. "If she didn't remember, that explains it. Why nothing about the murder or any of the attacks I've been investigating was what a YoRHa would do. And I've met this executioner unit before. Before the Bunker fell." His brown tightened, but he refused to look her way. "This isn't the first time she's tried to erase her memory."

"If you didn't remember," Anemone pressed, her eyes drilling into 8E's as though she could find some kind of satisfying conclusion if she just went deep enough. "Why did you kill Lobelia and Rho?"

"Because they were in the way." 8E shrugged like it couldn't be helped, but her voice came out leaden. "Not remembering didn't make me not an Executioner."

* * *

Few of the camp's androids were willing to go anywhere near Humility. The ones that were didn't want to get too close to V. Delivering it as promised to the crumbled corridors of the skyscrapers that separated the camp from the rest of the city was a job that fell to 9S.

It crossed his mind that if V had done all of this for the sword, he could hold onto it. Demand his answers right here and now. But when he arrived, Shadow rubbed affectionately against his hip and wrapped herself around the handle and 9S' fingers limply let it go.

V was either too overconfident to know just how much he had risked or his nerves were made of more steel than the old abandoned factory. With only the information 9S had gathered and some obvious prying into Pod 153's records of what 9S had been telling Theta, he had resolved the murder, set up an entire false identity, and pretty much secured his ability to come and go in the city as he pleased. There was no reason 9S couldn't just walk out of the camp and go with him right then.

But V showed no sign of wanting him to, and 9S wanted to believe he wouldn't go even if he had. The words they'd last exchanged hovered between them as silent and nearly as solid as the pods over their shoulders.

"That man," V said abruptly. "Anthurium. He has some information that may be of interest to you."

He stalked off without waiting for any questions or offering any more answers. Cryptic was normal for V, so it wasn't enough to make 9S worry, but it amplified the sense that there had been a shift for both of them since they last spoke. Like they were both trying to decide how to communicate something that might be too much to talk about.

Maybe in V's case, he was leaving it for someone else to say.

Anthurium sat in one of the emptied truck beds tapping his foot expectantly. When he saw 9S, he immediately hopped down.

"Your friend send you?"

"Yeah. He said you had some information for me… But what are you even doing here? How did you end up with him and 8E?"

"I'm not sure myself," Anthurium admitted, sagging back against the truck bed. "About two weeks back he showed up in the forest without you and gave me some data. Said it was important and I was supposed to give it to you if anything happened to him. Next thing I know he shows up today with that woman and asked for an escort to the camp."

"Did he tell you_ anything_ beforehand?"

"That he'd never been to the camp and it would be a pain if he got shot."

That was V, alright… "What's the data he left with you?"

"…You have any idea what it is?" The old android took one look at the way 9S' fingers balled up around his coat in response to the low, conspiratorial whisper, and crossed his arms. "Thought so. I'm not playing messenger on that. It's serious and you should hear it from someone you trust."

"I think V knows I trust you, Anthurium..." Whatever V had been doing out there, he'd considered this data important enough to take precautions with, even if it meant interacting with an android he'd barely made eye contact with before. "I can't think of another reason he'd involve you."

"If he can think about you that clearly, he should be able to tell you just as clearly." He stubbornly raised his chin, but it didn't keep. He wasn't that kind of person. "I'm glad you trust me, but you should get it from a friend, not just some old nobody you pass in the woods once in a while."

A cry of rage from somewhere in the back of the camp cut their conversation short. 9S moved instinctually to place himself between Anthurium and the direction the sound had come from. If 8E had gone berserk, he didn't want to leave the older android undefended. But nothing happened. Everything went quiet. A few moments later 8E did appear, marched up to them in Gamma's grip which made a far better restraint than any ropes ever could.

"She has a message for you," said Gamma.

He stared at 8E. "…You're bleeding."

"It happens. Others generally won't respond well when they find out they were hanging out with machine-hearted murderers." He squinted as she licked at her split lip. "I knew Aconite, Aconite knew Lobelia, Cypress knew both of them and my last target in this camp…so technically we all kinda knew each other. Being an executioner leaves sort of a messy situation if you have to come back to the scene of the kill, you know?"

He thought he did. Some unyielding and unsatisfied part of him still hated her on principle, but now that she was no longer directly between him and V it was easier to look at her as more than a target for that hatred. All androids cared for humans in some sense, but not the way YoRHa did. Her feelings for V were probably the same as his. After watching her nearly yank free of her own arm just because V was in pain, it wasn't a wonder she had killed other androids for him.

9S knew very well that an executioner with something to protect could do just about anything.

She probably knew she was never going to see V again, but he couldn't make himself say anything soothing. 'I'll take care of him' would have been simple to say, but it felt too much like kindness and it was still far too soon for that.

"What do you want?"

Her brows rose but she just as quickly snorted laughter and wiggled in Gamma's grip. "You mind?"

"I do," Gamma growled.

8E rolled her eyes and leaned forward until she was close enough to whisper in 9S' ear. He didn't flinch back or withdraw. He had no reason to fear her and if it was some kind of last request or secret message, he was at least willing to hear her out.

What she told him was so much more than either of those things.

He snatched her by her collar to closely search her face. Killing her on the spot would have been the least he would do to her if he had found even the slightest evidence she was lying, but there was none.

A weightless terror overcame him. He bolted out of the camp. Several times he nearly tripped on the treacherous terrain while paying too much attention to his map and not enough to his feet, but he managed to catch up to V. As he gripped his knees and vented excess heat in hoarse huffs, V looked down him with only puzzlement.

He wasn't sure if he wanted 8E's words to be true or not, but he couldn't risk not believing her.

"Can you come with me for a bit?"


	68. Proper Burials

At the bottom of an escalator mostly reclaimed by dust and stubborn vines, V tugged his glove as high on his arm as it would go and flexed his fingers. The scaled arm hidden beneath was still warm. Allowing maso to do its work on him was far from the explosive, transformative matter it began as, but even with such a tightly controlled reaction, producing salt to make his point had not been ideal. Another rip in the space between hell and this world may have opened somewhere in the city. It would be small, just like the last, but that could not be underestimated in a place with so many waiting vessels.

He eyed 'Humility', buried point down in the dirt off to his side. Blue-violet energy swirled in the elaborate patterns. If there were demons, they would likely come to him as long as he had it.

Griffon was nestled atop its hilt and lethargically stretched his jaws. "Whaddya think boy-bot's up to?"

"We'll see," V said distractedly.

9S had gone down to ravine alone at his own insistence. Shadow sat on the cliff's edge, vigilant for any sign of further demonic activity in the depths below. As long as she was still, there was no cause for concern or at least no more than V already harbored in the persistent tap of his index finger against his cane. 9S had not spared the breath to explain himself at all, and V was left to wonder what had him behaving with such urgency absent of his usual tendency toward chatter.

When Shadow did stir, it was to trot back to V's side and melt back against his body. Outside the crumbling mall, 9S' footsteps thumped against the bridge, slower and far heavier than usual. V could just make out the creak of the ropes. A faint pattering reached him, which he briefly mistook for the beginnings of rain before it became clear the source was 9S.

He was drenched and so was the limp body he carried in his arms.

Months under a flowing current had bloated and warped her clothing, but her face was untouched and doll-perfect. Even in the dull, gray light that suffused from the low clouds, her color outmatched V's own pallid skin. He had to remind himself that life-like flush meant nothing compared to the single clean cut in the midsection of her dress. She had been dead for nearly a year.

9S' arms shivered, not with cold but with the effort of carrying her across the cracked and uneven stones. She must have weighed more than him, but he made no indication he wanted help. Contented insolation surrounded him, so like V's own that he didn't bother to offer Shadow's assistance. 9S would not have accepted. Even when he climbed the stairs to the elevator half-swallowed by the growth of a massive oak tree, he chose to kneel and lay her against his raised knee rather than relinquish her.

Red light shifted to blue. 9S stepped into the threshold of opened doors and turned to face V. His silence was a clear invitation, but the uneasy frown tugging at the corners of his mouth betrayed any illusion of confidence. He was a child hoping to not have to go alone into the dark, and now V grasped why he'd responded so harshly when asked where those doors went. At the bottom of that elevator shaft must be a place that was sacred to him, but terrifying in equal measure.

V gestured for Griffon to stay where he was. The familiar snorted, yawned, and settled more comfortably on his perch while V ascended the stairs. The doors closed and the absence of any functional bulbs rendered the dark impenetrable, sparing him a closer look at 9S or the corpse as they descended. When they came to rest, his eyes were drawn to the light that seeped through the gaps in the ancient metal.

The doors parted and the moonlight glow of an entire field of lunar tears welcomed them into a cave whose dark, glittering heights were the closest thing to a night sky he had seen in months. The remnants of what he had absorbed from Emil reached out like ghosts grasping for a long-ago life. Blurred faces and unclear names lapped at the shores of his mind.

9S moved through the flowers with slow, careful steps. Pollen swirled in his wake like trailing ripples in a river of stars. He didn't stop until he'd reached a wooden post rising from one of few bald patches in the field. The marker was old, and the visor tied to it was coated in enough pollen for it to gleam faintly in the dark.

He had made an attempt to mourn here sometime in the past—perhaps he felt it could be done properly this time.

The vestiges of some kind of lean-to stood to one side. Despite knowing that it was not actually as familiar to him as it felt, V was drawn to it. It was the only thing he'd seen in a long time that looked like a human being had lived there. Dust and pollen coughed from the ancient cot as he sank onto it. The whole structure creaked, but miraculously it didn't fall apart.

9S paid the sound no mind at all. He had his back turned to him and his focus remained firmly on the task of wicking moisture from her hair and straightening her clothes and giving her whatever dignity he felt she was owed in death. Every motion he took with her bore an intimate deliberation that raised goosebumps on V's arms. He should not have been there. Even if 9S had asked for it, his presence seemed an almost voyeuristic intrusion.

"She was an E type too."

V looked up, too dazed by the combination of discomfort and the remains of maso fatigue to offer the perfunctory '_what_' that fizzled through his mind.

"2**B** was a cover designation. She was an executioner. Mine. Every time I found out something I shouldn't, she'd receive orders. Carry them out. Erase me. I'd wake up brand new, vowing to do my best to serve mankind. Get assigned to 2B again. Repeat it all. They left bits and pieces sometimes—like my sword. But mostly they took things away. Important… things."

9S' difficult moods usually took the form of reticence as he retreated into his own mind or explosive emotional spirals, but this was neither. He was all barely conjoined thoughts, haphazardly spilled in whatever order they came. Or didn't come. V could hear him rubbing at his coat in the abrupt silence and every few seconds a halting inhalation that never quite made it as far as words.

"How many times?" he offered.

"Dunno yet. A lot, probably. January 30, 11942… Well, I guess I technically had a second rollout sometime around August. They only paired me with 2B after that. So that's three and a half years. You'd asked how old I was? Nevermind, that was a long time ago. Anyway, it never takes me long to figure it out. Only 2 months this last cycle. This iteration of me is only from March 10th of last year."

V rubbed at his eyes and tried not to laugh. He'd let resemblance make him unexpectedly paternal with an android who was only six months old when they met and _still_ he'd ended up in hell during the boy's birthday.

The foulness of this world's sense of humor was immeasurable and he would not miss it at all.

"Is March when she killed you last?"

"No. We died together that time. By choice. To complete a mission, I mean. It happened every now and again. I think… I _know_ it made 2B happy."

9S trailed his gloveless fingers through the stalks of the lunar tears. Even if his thoughts were as unconnected as his words, V recognized the act as purposeful. How often had he combed in search of only the most ideal gift for his mother in the same manner? Whether he bled or cried, it was background noise in the effort of ensuring she was given only what was worthy of her. In the same way, 9S inspected the shapes at the center of each pale glow until he found the one he thought was perfect. He plucked the leaves and bent the stem and wove it into her hair as gently as if he were trying not to wake her.

"E models were public knowledge. They had an official purpose. But for me, the first time I met 8E was the first time 'I' had heard of them. I already suspected something was up with 2B, but that was when I really started to get it."

"You're a scanner," V said, echoing words whose weight he had not understood when 9S first spoke them. "You always pick up on things."

"Yeah…" He folded her hands over the bloodless gash in her midsection. "Curiosity killed the cat and all."

"Curiosity didn't kill you. 2E killed you."

"Don't call her that." 9S turned from her body with a strangely composed frown. A sort that said he already knew V didn't understand and maybe that he didn't expect him to, but made it clear there was a line there and he expected V to keep a respectable distance from it. "2B had her orders. And if you really heard her message, you know she didn't enjoy it. …I don't think any executioner did."

"She had a choice."

"No, she didn't. Neither of us did."

8E had made a similar indication. Her defensiveness had made it sound like denial, but the impression V got from 9S was very different. In his mouth, it was an observation. A fact, like being YoRHa. Sterile and objective as the sharp edge of a sword.

"I know you're not her," 9S went on, fussing with some small detail of her dress. "But I do see her in you, V. I can't help it. The ways I feel about you both are… similar."

A suspicious prickle ran down V's back and raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "In what regard, exactly?"

9S looked between them and rubbed at the back of his neck, his mouth a thin, twisted line. "I guess I sort of hate you."

V didn't know what he'd been bracing himself for, but that particular string of words was well beyond his wildest expectation. Everything about the last twenty minutes, from the conversation to all of 9S' uncomfortably tender treatment of 2B's body, pointed in the opposite direction.

"It's complicated," 9S added quickly. "My time with her was the only thing that ever… it was the only thing that had any meaning to me. So she's special to me. But she was also the one who took that away from me. I can't…_not_ be angry at that. It's not as simple as feeling only good things or only bad things about her. And it's the same with you."

"_My only treasure_," said V, his voice low enough to mask the bitterness of his recitation. "_My divine hate."_

"You guys have poems for everything, huh?" 9S stood and joined him under the ragged canopy. He seemed skeptical of the cot, and instead settled cross-legged atop a pile of stones. Even there, his gaze drifted to black-clad corpse resting peacefully among the flowers. "How did 8E act with you before she remembered?"

"As if I was absolute. She never asked anything of me, and the lengths she'd go to in order to secure my protection and praise were likely without limit."

"That's by design." He touched a hand to his chest. "To compensate for having the heart of a machine, YoRHa have a stronger longing for humans than normal androids. It's a core feature of our programming."

V drummed his fingers thoughtfully along the top of his cane. "Is that why the two of you found it necessary to fight like beasts every time I wasn't there to interfere?"

"There were more reasons than that…" 9S muttered defensively. "But I can't say that wasn't a big part of the problem."

"I presume then that your hate lies in the fact that you are aware of the effect my humanity has on you?" A hint of wry amusement crept into his voice. "And you disagree with that effect?"

"I do. It's like I have thoughts that are mine and then thoughts that are _pretending _to be mine and sometimes I can tell one from the other, and other times I can't and I hate it. For a long time, you were never really a reason to go on living as much as you were a barrier preventing me from dying. I resented you a lot for it at the start. I didn't want to be in a world that didn't have 2B in it. That time we first went underground I… _may_ have secretly been hoping you would get hurt. But you were strong. So I told myself your existence gave hers meaning and resolved to protect you for my own reasons." He laughed powerlessly at himself. "That may be how I justified it while I let myself be pulled along by my protocols, though."

_Pulled along by protocol_. Now there was a notion he'd have liked to take back in time, considering the blind focus on demonic natures that led to his own birth. 9S' situation was similar and so was 8E's now that V better understood. But the thing he wished to carve out was much more understandable than the totality of his humanity and he treasured even the memories of his own death at the hands of someone he clearly loved. For all the other ways in which he was too harsh or too naïve with himself, 9S had a much more centered grip on what was important than Vergil had ever had.

"Do not discredit yourself," he said appreciatively. "Folly and cruelty may be the hammer and nail that constructed you, but the only match to your curiosity is your irreverence."

"Thanks… I think." He straightened his legs and folded his fingers together between his knees. "I did have fun with you, V. But it's frustrating to not know how much of any of this was me or my programming."

V smirked. "How angry have you been, exactly? Enough to kill me?"

9S flinched, and V realized too late that 9S wasn't the right match for such a joke, much less at this moment. "I didn't want to do that much... Maybe just push you in the river."

He hummed, wondering if 9S realized just how dangerous that might prove to be. Likely not—he was alternating between fidgeting with his hands and glancing at 2B, clearly trying to wrestle the rest of his thoughts into order. The effort took him long enough for the conversation to lull and V's mind to wander. He knew on some level that androids must be beholden to humans, but not to the extent 9S was suggesting. If V died, it was possible 9S might have ended up no different than the red-haired twins—guilty in unending fashion through no will of their own. Given all the other pointless curses heaped onto YoRHa's name, it would hardly be surprising.

"I found a bunch of 2B's memories on her sword," 9S said carefully. "I'm... I think I'll try and repair her."

V glanced toward the elevator, gauging whether it would end in more of a mess to leave or to stay. "You didn't speak to Anthurium," he said in carefully even tones.

"Does that matter? He told me it was serious and I should get that data from a friend."

"Is that what you consider me?"

"I dunno… Maybe more like…family?"

The lilt at the end that requested either permission or confirmation, the ludicrousness of the very idea—V laughed. First in a single harsh snicker and then in rolling waves. He might have begrudgingly let 'friend' happen even though it was just as outlandish to him, but not family. _Never_ family. Misplaced paternal affect or not, that wasn't something V was looking to replace or recreate.

'Family' was only a thing he should have taken better care not to lose in the first place—perhaps then he might regard the term as something other than a synonym for 'opponent'.

"That word means far less to me than you think it does."

"What about Nero?" 9S asked, baffled and searching V's face.

"What about him?"

"He's your family right? Didn't you love him?"

A single white crack formed in the solid black well that occupied most of V's heart.

How could he have? What time was there? What _point_ was there? The past was gone and the future was up to Vergil, and while his humanity may have been recovered and his temperament made more reflective by absorbing V's experiences, Vergil was still fundamentally more of a demon than V could ever be. The bridge between him and Nero might remain burned forever.

Love was far too much to ask between descendants of Sparda, and family didn't mean anything positive to V. But Nero did.

"I did not meet Nero until he was a boy more grown than not, and I did not know he was my son until more than a month after I had walked into his home, taken from him no different from the demons that took my mother's life, and left him for dead. That's what family is." He dropped his chin down to one hand. In the light of the rising pollen, 9S was still and wide-eyed beside him. "Nero was something better than that. Someone deserving of my gratitude."

'And so are you' hung from the end of his words like a battered flag of surrender, and V could not be bothered trying to dissipate its incriminating presence. He was unsure what had prompted him to make such a confession, considering 'he' hadn't done any of those things. But he had certainly treated Nero as family in other regards—goading him, using him to suit his own cause, never giving him the full story even when he was dying. The only thing V _hadn't_ done before rejoining with Urizen was fight him.

Something slapped him between his shoulders, heavy and solid as an iron pipe.

His vision rattled and the wind left him in a single cough that seemed to have physical weight to it. Pain burned a tight ring beneath his ribs, and as he doubled over, he blinked incredulously at the only source it could have come from.

9S tucked his open palm away behind his back. "Too hard? I tried to hold back and avoid aiming for anything vital. It seemed like you needed it." He averted his eyes with a crooked, guilty half-smile. "And I wanted to know if I even could with the programming and everything." He laughed, even as he rubbed restlessly at his coat and began to scuff his heels against the stones. "_'You hurt a human! You hurt a human!'_ is what's going through my head. The guilt is reeaally strong."

V managed to pull himself back into an upright position, but he couldn't help coughing on the way up. It didn't hurt him nearly as much as it winded him, but the indignity was going to linger for as long as his shoulders stung. "A just punishment for taking the kind of measure I would normally only expect from _Griffon_."

"No belief without experiment, right?"

V stared at him. First, he struck out of nowhere then tried to justify it with a butchered quote. Incredible. Utterly incredible.

"Are you uh…okay?" 9S asked timidly.

"**No**."

9S peered at him and decided correctly on his own that V was lying in order to exacerbate his guilt. "That's exactly the kind of thing that makes me want to throw you in the river."

Jokes. A physical distraction and jokes. At tangible expense to him, 9S was attempting to reset the conversation and put them back in familiar territory. Or perhaps he didn't know how else to react. V couldn't say and was quietly pleased with the out. The alternative was to sit in silence while everything he'd said settled on them like grave dirt.

"To the sound of your weeping as I am swept away, I'm sure."

9S smiled, but his hands continued to tremble when he lowered them into his lap. The punishment for lashing out at the being he was supposed to treat as god would not abate so easily. "It's been 6,468 hours since 2B died. Humans forget things over time, but I still remember every moment I was with her in perfect detail. I also remember everything I did after she died. The kind of…person I turned into." He looked up at the pollinated air. "Even if you screwed up that bad, you don't sound particularly proud of it now. I know what that's like."

V gave a short, quiet 'hmph'. For having a life as filled with nightmares as V's own, 9S was… senselessly kind. Enough to care for someone who took the only thing he loved away on no less than a dozen repeated occasions, and enough to care for someone as difficult as V as well.

The last thing V wanted him to be was 'like family'.

"V." The sincerity of that single syllable demanded nearly as much of him as his mother's voice. "I never expect you to tell me everything about you. But whatever secret you've been keeping about _me_ isn't your responsibility."

"…The final protocol of the YoRHa plan isn't complete."

Gratitude warmed 9S' even as the reality of those words visibly bore down on his shoulders. "There's something that comes after the destruction of the Bunker and the loss of YoRHa's data?"

"It's not meant to be lost. It's meant to be completely destroyed." He paused, deciding his next words with extreme care. After this much, he didn't want to leave the explanation in the hands of the pods. "The Pod Network contains a final program that entails the destruction of any surviving YoRHa units and the complete purge of all related data. In order to defer the activation of this program after the Tower appeared, a specific trigger was proposed by Pod 042 and Pod 153."

9S remained eerily still. "It's me, isn't it?"

"So it is." He leaned back, rolling the last of 9S' heavy-handed strike from his shoulders. "Repairing 2B is up to you. But if you die, she will die with you. So will the other scanners. Pod 042 requested my assistance with this matter, but given my condition and the appearance of demons, it seemed the safest to leave you in the camp until I was…stable."

9S cocked his head at the silver shape floating in the dark over V's shoulder. "Pod 042…you asked for help to circumvent your programming?"

"AFFIRMATIVE. I HAVE DECIDED THAT THE EXECUTION OF FINAL PROTOCOL IS NO LONGER AN ACCEPTABLE OUTCOME." Pod 042's antennae whirred, and he sank a little behind V's head, as though he was hiding. "SS LEVEL CONFIDENTIALITY DOES NOT DENOTE AN ARMY OF HUMANITY ANDROID. IT IS RESERVED FOR COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE FIRST POD SYSTEM TO THOSE OF US IN ACTIVE ROLES IN THE FIELD. POD UNITS ARE THE ADMINISTRATORS OF PROJECT YORHA. I WISHED…TO MAKE UP FOR THIS."

"Pod 153," 9S said quietly. "Can the program be destroyed?"

"IN THEORY, YES. HOWEVER, IT WOULD REQUIRE ATTACKING THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE POD REGIONAL NETWORK. THIS ACTION HAS AN UNACCEPTABLY LOW PROBABILITY OF SURVIVAL."

"…I understand." In an uncharacteristic show of restraint, he did not erupt with either questions or anger. Instead, he looked at V for a few moments, at the end of which he spared a cheerful smile as though they'd never fought at all. "Thank you."

V shrugged. "It is only what was owed."

"Yeah, yeah, if that's what you need to say..." 9S seemed more like himself as he slid down from his seat and paced the flowers with crossed his arms, no doubt already formulating a dozen plans to deal with his problem.

V stood and made for the elevator. After all this, he thought he might welcome a crass joke from Griffon.

To his surprise, 9S darted right after him. He'd expected 9S to stay at the grave a little longer but made no comment. He was out of things to say. 9S, most likely, was not. And sure enough, they were about half-way back to the surface when 9S interrupted the silence one more time with the drawn-out 'So…' that always heralded at least five more questions.

"Is there anything else...?"

That was one. "I imagine you know the answer to that."

"Hm… When?"

That was…two? V's brows scrunched. "When what?"

"When are you leaving?"

The doors opened, but V didn't move to get out and neither did 9S. At the bottom of the stairs, Griffon eyeballed them and stretched his neck out curiously. V jammed his arm against the the button to close the doors and take them back down and turned. In the dark, 9S was invisible save the twin points of his optic lights. "_Where_ did you hear I was leaving?"

"8E. When she told me where 2B's body was... she asked me to make sure I said goodbye to you for both of us."

V's mind blanked and for the first time since his birth, he felt his ears burn. No wonder 9S chose now to confess 2B's nature and the details of his programming. Wanting his answer, confessing how he thought of V both at the start and now, taking the opportunity to strike V just to see what would happen—these were all things done because 9S believed there might not be another chance. He'd even spoken in past-tense at a handful of points and while V noticed, he had simply not pieced it together.

Fern would never have dared, but for all 8E's seeming obedience, when she said she had plans of her own, apparently she meant that she intended to meddle.

"It's only a possibility," V sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose.

The twin lights disappeared. In the dark, 9S' voice was only a whisper. "Were you going to tell me at all?"

That was three. "I cannot recall that last time I bothered to say goodbye. I am… unpracticed."

"No shit…" The elevator settled and 9S made a hasty sniffling noise as the doors opened. He took the opportunity to look out across the flowers and gave a heavy sigh. "Should I come with you? Do you need help?"

The doors closed around the end of that fourth question. "No. I don't know if this is going to work, and if it does there is a possibility I may end up in hell." Hopefully, if he did, it would be the right one this time. "I'm no strange to navigating hell and finding demons, you less so. And you—"

"Have stuff of my own to do," 9S completed. "Right. I'll be okay. I'll be at the camp, so if it doesn't work you can find me—And if it does and you don't come back I'll just… I'll assume you made it." He sounded like he must have been making a brave face, even though V could hear him gripping his coat tight enough that the wrinkles might never come out. "Make sure you make up with Nero, okay?"

V gave an amused hum. "I'll make an effort."

The elevator stopped and the doors opened once more. This time, they both stepped off. "What exactly are you gonna do, anyway?"

And there was the fifth question, easiest of them all. V flipped his cane up over his shoulder and smirked. "Destroy the church. And the gods with it."

9S whirled and jabbed a triumphant finger at Pod 153. "I _knew_ it!"


	69. The Sound of Chaos

Sullen wind settled on V, leaving a pervasive damp absent of any actual rain.

The castle walls weren't more than fifty paces behind him, but it may as well have been a different world compared to the near-impenetrable tree line of the northern woods. The last time he'd come to this threshold, his head had already been pounding in time with the sound of bells. This time there were no tolls. The sounds that reached him were of birds and beasts and the muffled screams of machines all mixing together beneath the dominant roar of the three or four waterfalls in the area. The woods could pass for normal, with no gods or creatures pretending to be gods to be found within. Even the maso in his body was unusually quiet.

It wasn't without pleasure that V wondered if the gods were capable of fear.

Griffon soared down out of the darkening sky. "Still right where we left it, and still makes my feathers crawl. So, nothin' out of the ordinary."

"Then let's be on our way."

The wall of gnarled roots and mountainous trunks did not prove the same hindrance it had once been. The dragon's power had proved as much a boon to his stamina as his physical strength. The way he took was the same path of least resistance that 9S had forged previously, but he was able to navigate it largely unassisted by either Shadow or Griffon. He may even have been able to carry Humility if its very presence wasn't still so souring that he refused to touch it if he could avoid it.

In truth, V didn't want to take the sword with him. It could rot in the bottom of the ravine for all he cared. But there was always that possibility that it would fall into the hands of fool machines that would treat it as some emblem of kingship. The possibility of androids using it was equally unacceptable. It was the sword of a thrall but for better or worse, it was _his_. If it must exist at all, its fate was no one else's to determine but his own.

For now, that fate was to be carried by Pod 042.

"I wonder what's gonna happen this time if you end up getting sucked back into Vergil," said Griffon, wheeling by him. "We never did figure out why the gang all came back. You think we'll just cease to exist? Or maybe that shit in the basin means you're stuck with us now?"

"Who knows."

"Real helpful. Guess it doesn't matter, but it would suck ass if we end up getting left behind again. It's not like Dante's around to have another rematch with. Boy-bot's nice and all but I'm pretty sure if the three of us went all out on him we'd find out if you can turn metal into a paste."

V's lips pursed. Nightmare would have no cause and Shadow treated 9S with nearly as much care as she spared for V. If they had thrown themselves against Dante before, it was because he was as an enemy to Vergil, or they remembered him as an enemy of the demons they'd once been. Griffon, on the other hand, had funny ways of thinking. "I would not underestimate him. When he has a goal in mind, his tenacity can be surprising."

"Aww, you getting sentimental, Shakespeare?"

"Merely adjusting your assessment. If you wish to die, I'm sure that woman you were flirting with would be happy to send you to hell with a bomb in your beak."

"Not a bad idea!" Griffon cackled. "If this fancy vacation's over, can't be a much better way to go than that!"

"Do not lay all your eggs all in one basket," V said with a raised brow and a hint of a smile. "Whether this works or not, the main event must come first."

Griffon half-grumbled some protest that he didn't lay eggs, but as they rounded a bend, V cut the rest of the conversation short with a swipe of his cane.

There was an android nestled into the bend of a tree root.

Her nose was a smooth hill dragging the rest of her face mercilessly toward its slope, the peak of which was buried in a book. Her eyes were similarly consumed with its contents. Time had stripped the ruddy leather binding of any titles or authors, but V associated the sort of exasperated determination on her face more with the balancing of a deeply red ledger than with the stressful turns of a novel.

They passed her by without incident. She didn't look up at them or give V any reason to mind her beyond keeping a reasonable distance. If she came there to work, it was no business of his. However, as he crested the next route on the path, he did glance back at her.

She was the only android he'd ever seen wearing glasses.

The scent of flowers grew dense as they forged further in. Spring was only beginning in the area claimed by the machines as the forest kingdom, but in these unpopulated woods the air was swampy with heat and humidity. Blooms too high up in the canopy to see snowed pollen that made a yellow haze almost too thick to see through. By the time V made it to the church, he, Griffon, and even Pod were thoroughly encrusted with it.

The clearing was not. Minus the deafening peal of bells, it was exactly as V remembered: Flat and unreal, more like a photograph than a physical space. The unnatural stillness of the grass and the absence of birdsong were even more obvious now that they were joined by the lack of a pollen haze. Even the dusting V shook and swiped from his body fell limp and inert to the earth, unable to float under the tyrannical pressure of the gods' presence.

From the bottom of the steps, V stared up at the iron bones and blackened stones of the church. The 3-eyed relief stared back. From beneath his skin, the dragon stirred and rumbled.

He tugged the glove free and tossed it aside into the grass. "You should return to 9S, Pod. You cannot go where I am going."

"NEGATIVE. WHILE I CANNOT BE OF ASSISTANCE IN DIRECT CONFRONTATION WITH THE UNKNOWN ENTITY, I WILL REMAIN IN ATTENDANCE IN THE EVENT THAT V REQUIRES FURTHER SUPPORT."

V smiled and patted the silver case. If he had to miss anything about this world, he thought he'd miss the straightforwardness of the support unit. "If I don't return, bury that sword somewhere it will never be found."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

Ascending the few crumbling steps and passing through the threshold sent a current running through V. He didn't have to hear the bells. The low boom of them resonated in his blood. But as he came to the center of the sanctuary, there was no activity. No sign of the beings that had been so eager to meet him before.

"Feeling shy, are we?"

_Watcher. Seed. Song. _The words took the shape of memories the dragon had bled into him, tinged red with rage at the presence of a foe that should have been dead so many millennia ago. She perceived as he perceived, but this matter was written somewhere deeper than her thoughtless mind. Violet flame engulfed his arm and his thoughts slid sideways.

He perceived as she perceived.

His body was amorphous terrain. The marks of his contracts brilliant leylines scored into a burning violet landscape otherwise lacking in any markers or true boundaries. Maso was neither the salt it made of humans nor the sludgy, heavy substance it felt like to V once he finally had pure demonic energy coursing through him again. To her, it took the form of rings. White and black rings with a repeating sequence of four letters in a language V did not understand.

_Shatter._

It was neither a command nor a desire nor a perception—more rudimentary than instinct, and less rational than impulse. It was just things as they must be. A reality made true through an emanation of her own rings whose appearance mirrored those of the maso. The two identical forces shattered against one another and the pealing of bells answered.

V snapped back into himself, his perception again his own. The sky had turned to blood. The church fell away, black stones yielding to black flowers. The clouds roiled and sparked, and a phantom roar rumbled in answer along the back of V's neck.

Like a premonition coming to life, white infants descended from the red sky on wings of electricity.

The Watchers.

"Eugh! And here I thought empusa were fuckin' ugly!"

V grinned and held up an arm for Griffon to perch on. "Glad you could make it in a timely fashion this round."

"I took the express flight," said Griffon. "Didn't wanna be fashionably late and miss the part where we crash the choir rehearsal. But what the fuck are those things supposed to be?"

"Unexpected guests," said V, twisting his cane to the ready as the Watchers closed in. "Let's give them the welcome they're due."

Vergil, as a general rule, did not feel things when he fought demons. Not things he didn't already feel when he wasn't fighting. Focus. Superiority. The security of his own strength. To swing Yamato was to employ a practical solution to being approached by insects. If they were strong, perhaps he got a little motivated. If it was his blood, well, that came with many things. But fighting demons, for Vergil, was a means to keep the world around him in the order he thought it should be in, and power was simply a another means to that end.

It was in this regard that V was furthest from Vergil.

The Watchers were not demons, but they may as well have been. They giggled and cooed in distorted imitation of actual infants, belching wisps that clogged the sky. On Griffon's wing, he soared through the tangle and past the Watcher that had drifted closest to him. As it turned to look up at him, Shadow pierced through its cheeks and V skated easily down the steep incline, a trail of violet light bleeding from his altered arm as she struck his cane into the grotesque creature's eye. It fell to the flowers, casting up a cloud of black petals.

V remembered what it was to crawl and struggle. He remembered powerlessness and the frustration of being helpless. He was a stripped-down shade of himself and his body, frail as it was, was all he had. And these _things_ had the gall to choke his veins with their poison and attempt to use him to their whims while he had no power to do anything about it.

But now the shoe was on the other foot, wasn't it?

"_Thou, mother of my mortal part."_ He planted his boot against the dead Watcher's neck and wrenched his cane free. "_With cruelty didst mold my heart."_

There were still a dozen more. Rows of flashing bolts fried the dark earth in a marching wave that brought several spiraling dizzily down to V's level. He reached out to Shadow and found her waiting to wrap herself around his being a second time. She melted along one half of his body in inky wisps and reddened swirls, close enough to give him speed and separate enough to find her own targets as he found his. Between bright flashes of electricity, they pierced and sliced and sent the Watchers crashing to the ground one by one.

All the while the dragon chanted in time with V's exhilarated heartbeat: _Shatter. Shatter. Shatter._

This was what he remembered. _This_ was the common thread that had brought him and Urizen back into harmony with one another. To be held captive by power was a mistake he would not make again, but that did not change how he hated going without. Weakest of all his aspects, V held both joy and appreciation for his new power. His ruthless delight sang in every abruptly cut off giggle and gurgled death cry.

When he finally landed and found all the Watchers mere broken statues already disintegrating into the field, he was almost disappointed they had perished so quickly.

"_Didst close my tongue in senseless clay_," he incanted, letting Shadow fall away from him. "_And me to mortal life betray_."

The ground rumbled and the sky grew bright and sickly red. His surroundings flickered, and he saw the shape of the church he still technically inhabited as a phantom around him. If he understood, this was the moment. He could force a crossing somehow from this juncture—all he had to do was kill her and ensure he crossed _alone._

At his snap, Nightmare rose, a deeper shade of darkness than even the flowers could produce. Before his purple eye, a white-hot light gathered and shot through the clouds. There was a shriek like the sound of those wretched bells and they scattered, revealing the full form of the white giant as it fell from its glorious heights.

V let the red dragon's power overrun him and scales the color of old blood crept rapidly up over his arm. An urgent hiss of _Heart! c_ame with her and he leaped into Nightmare's open hands to be catapulted into the air. Griffon caught him at the peak of his ascent and carried him further still, laughing coarsely and cursing in the face of the distorted salt-carved creature. Its mass was too great to defend itself in time, and when V reached her, he drove the dragon's claws into her chest unimpeded.

The white giant's body disintegrated around him, and with it, the already tenuous dream ended.

V landed back inside himself, kneeling on the stones in the exact same place he had been before. The church had not survived the battle and lay freshly razed with its stones scattered across the clearing. Pollen drifted in lazy swirls through air too still to be natural. The pressure had diminished, not vanished, and he could still feel the oily stir of maso beneath the heat of the red dragon.

He drew slowly back to his feet and curled his fingers over his chin. "I've missed something…"

"You've missed a lot."

The android he'd seen in the forest was at the bottom of the church steps with Pod. This time she sat atop a hefty white briefcase with a pattern that could have come off of Victorian-styled wallpaper in a cheap hotel pretending at luxury. She still stared down into her book with the annoyed expression of a teacher wrangling a difficult student.

From the threshold, he leaned on his cane to consider her more carefully, but it was hard to know where to begin. Nothing about her resembled other androids. Not the sleek black pigtails hanging from her nape or the ring of keys on her wrist or any of her clothing. Even compared to YoRHa's unusual choice in combat attire, it was abnormal. Just like the clearing itself, it was too clean. Timeless yet slightly out of place.

"A friend, Pod?"

"Just a traveling weapon salesman," she answered, frowning up at him. "And _you_ are an anomaly that should not have appeared."

"Ah, finally. Someone with answers." He kicked up his cane and snatched it from the air, centering its point on her. "So? What'll it be?"

"Take it easy. I only _sell_ the weapons." She clapped the book shut and flicked the end of the cane aside so she could stand. "You went and got yourself entangled with 9S, so my only job here is to observe you. Well, I did take the opportunity to clean up your mess, too."

A flippant kick and the suitcase popped open, spilling far more red orbs than should realistically have been able to fit within its dimensions. They rattled through the grass and seeped into the nearby blade of Humility while V peered at her from beneath a wary frown.

"You fought demons."

"I corrected the dimensional error you caused most recently." She placed a hand on her hip and tilted her head at him. "This is the part where you should say thank you, but that's probably too much to expect from you, isn't it, Mr. V?"

He chose to ignore everything other than the fact that she knew about hell and had apparently closed whatever small gate must have opened as a result of his 'proof' to Theta. "You said you couldn't interfere because of 9S?"

"He was directly involved in the local singularity that occurred here recently. It created a few temporal fractures, but there was no evidence of any associated dimensional events, so it was labeled low-priority. When the tower fell, that should have been the end of any need to observe this branch. But then _you_ showed up." She waved the book reproachfully under V's nose. "I had everything all stamped and done with and then suddenly we had not one, not two, but _five_ dimensional events! Do you know how embarrassing it was to have to an emergency re-investigation of a case I had already signed off on?"

"If you've been observing me," V said flatly, refusing to be caught up in any of what she was saying. "You should know I did not arrive here by choice and have been searching for an exit."

"You certainly have. Like a bull trapped in a china shop."

That was a complicated (and extremely antiquated) metaphor for an android, but he hadn't met a machine yet who could have said something like that. She didn't look YoRHa, but she didn't look like one of Theta's group either. "Do you have anything useful to tell me?"

"Sure. You will not be able to create the circumstances you're hoping for."

He rolled his eyes skyward. Was this what it was like for androids to speak with him? "You seem to desire me gone at least as much as I desire to be gone. Don't tell me the door is locked—either open it or tell me the location of the key. If you cannot do that, what is the point of your presence?"

"To see if you were going to create another dimensional event." With a flourishing sweep of her legs, she kicked her suitcase closed and reclaimed her seat. "We typically neutralize the source of those if the threat spirals out of control or creates too many dangerous branches, but the ones that follow you have been more of a minor annoyance so far."

"And?"

"And you seem to want the dimensions to stay separated as much as we do. So I'd like to put a little faith in you and see what happens." She crossed her legs and leaned forward, staring up at him over the rim of her glasses. "You can't kill the gods, Mr. V. They aren't really here in this dimension with us. As you may have noticed in your encounters, they're sort of elsewhere, and that's where we like them to stay. But that doesn't mean waiting around for humans is the only way they get in. Let your dragon finish their job in the church, and depending on what happens to you, maybe I'll give into temptation and offer you some advice so that we can all get what we want."

"And what is it you want?"

"A girl has to have _some_ secrets, Mr. V."

V stared ice at her, but she didn't flinch or shrink back from him. Unless he wanted this effort to be entirely fruitless, he had little choice but to do as she suggested. But he'd already brought the church down its foundations and there was nothing he could do differently assuming the gods were even still able to be challenged after his attack.

He focused on the presence of the dragon instead. He thought he'd done exactly as she desired when he fought the gods, but he could still feel her chanting somewhere in the back of his mind. Whatever it was he had missed, she knew what it was and what had to be done. He closed his eyes and followed her senses, feeling his arm grow hot and scales creep to his shoulder as he grew closer. When he opened his eyes, he was standing at a place that must have once held an altar.

It wasn't his style, but he dropped to one knee and drove his fist into the weakened stone, pummeling into the foundation of the church. The deeper he dug, the more he felt it. Another thing as it must be, this time in the form of hunger. A compulsion to consume that did not stem from his demons but from her remains taken into him.

A hole opened beneath his assault and light shone down on a strange black orb sitting in a bed of fine salt littered with the solid white shapes of once-human fingers. It looked like a poppy seed grown several sizes too large.

He looked up at the strange android. Though she wore the sort of aloof expression that he might have expected to see on his own face, her nod was slow and tense.

When he reached down to grab it, his tattoos yanked backward as if repelled by magnetism. The red-violet light coursing through his arm flashed bright and the dragon's hunger spiked insistently. Fully exposed to the light and rolling in his palm, those same four letters shimmered faintly across its surface, repeating over and over.

_Seed. Heart._

The scales raged past his shoulder to his chest and up over his throat. His tongue felt hot and he was certain the teeth in his mouth were not his own. The dragon did not await his permission. Pain surged through his jaw. It felt like she was reaching up from inside him to force his mouth open by jamming phantom claws between his back teeth and prying them apart. His arm stiffened as it went deaf to any impulse but hers. And the only one she had was to clap the hand she'd bestowed him to his mouth hard enough to knock his head back and send the seed tumbling down the back of his throat.

The pressure in the clearing vanished. Pollen blew naturally on the rising wind that swirled around his motionless body. His half the deal was complete and so was the dragon's mission. Control had returned to him immediately, yet he was pinned in place by the sensation of maso curdling and shriveling within him. It gathered like bile high in his stomach. An upsettingly familiar tingle spread from the bottom of his back and worked its way up, but when he wretched, it wasn't salt that erupted from him.

It was lunar tears.

Their petals tickled his throat and tongue and lips, forcing him to cough as much as he wretched, but they didn't stop coming. He heaved and coughed and convulse and they piled in his lap and spread across the dark stone, taking root as though they had always been there. Soon they were climbing up over his body as well. He raised his head as though he could escape being drowned by them where he sat, but it made no difference. They consumed him in their velvety hold.

He caught one last glimpse of Accord sitting in wait with her open book and a quill in hand before the petals crept over his eyes.


	70. Black Song, White Flower, Red Scales

_**~A machine watches hope be left behind. Devilish images dance in shadows cast by the black flowers.~**_

The lunar tears were gone. So was the church. So was the forest.

A white expanse stretched in every direction toward the razor-straight horizon where it bled into an unclouded crimson sky. Was this...? No. A flat desert of salt without visible end wouldn't be out of place among the more surreal of the underworld's landscapes, but it was too pristine. It lacked the grime and excessively grotesque aura of hell. No stench of rot and old meat. No demons. Not a drop of blood in sight. Even the sky cast no hue on the salt.

V checked his hands. No tattoos either. Only his black-scaled arm and the brand in his palm.

_**~'We'll be together again' whispers the prophecy. Time bends and births black and white intonations.~**_

If this was still the domain of the gods, it must have been far deeper in than before. The singing was human and intelligible if not especially melodious. A whisper ran under her voice that V could only make sense of as metallic, but not in the same way he would have attributed to an android or a machine. Beneath her song was the steely whisper of a sword being unsheathed. She sang the words syllable by syllable, as though there was a physical distance to cross between them and she had to carefully make the leap from one to the next.

Swiveling his head to try and locate the source, he saw a small crowd of white flowers stark against the red horizon. It was too far for him to be able to hear anyone singing from there, but just like hell, it would likely be best to lay down his human sensibilities as long as he was here. The salt slid and crunched beneath his steps. The air was too open and too still and they all lingered a little longer than they should. The swish of his coat, the slip of his hair against his ears, even the tapping of one finger along his tightly clenched cane—they all reached him as dull, lifeless sounds.

He told himself it was the dragon that set him on edge and not the subtly wrong nothingness. He could feel her focus increasing the closer they came to the flowers.

**_~Ancient and merciless voice. A prayer for solace answered not by god but by revenge.~_**

The cluster was made of six flowers: five as tall as he was and a larger sixth that towered over him like a tree. He circled them with a frown, took a running start and leaped atop what he gauged to be the smallest, and bounded from its edge. He didn't quite make it, but he managed to dig his cane into the petal of the sixth flower. The sudden addition of his weight didn't cause it to move or sway, and he was able to pull himself up on top of it.

He exhaled, short and sharp through his nose as he looked at the distance back to the ground. Heights were still a hassle without Griffon.

A woman sprouted where the stems should have been. Hair as white as his own fell over her shoulders and pooled at her hips where she was fully melded into the flower. Most of her left arm was missing. Her right eye was consumed by a flower that closely resembled a lunar tear, save where the petals were stained in shades of pink.

V held up his left hand quizzically. "Is this your enemy?"

The dragon could not be bothered with the pleasantry of a calm answer, and simply yanked him forward like a too-large dog on the too-small leash of his arm. Not only did she take him much closer than he preferred considering he had no idea what he was up against, but she wasted no time wrapping his talons around her neck.

Whoever or whatever this woman was, she was the source of the song. Her mouth wasn't moving and his grip was tight enough that he could feel the bones of her spine pressing into the curve of his fingers, but it was nonetheless her voice that whispered on the air, so close it was nearly inside his head.

_**~A crimson night blooms. Wings and feathers unfurl and gaze down.~**_

_Watcher, _the dragon flashed at him with sizzling intensity. _Giant._

"I see."

The woman's eye opened as he lifted his cane. A curious color, identical to the hue bleeding into the center of the flower nesting in her other eye. Her mouth parted and her scowl was just beginning to take shape when he shoved the cane through her. A choked grunt gurgled from her lips and her eyes flashed murderously as they locked onto his.

In other circumstances, the look might have thrilled him with the promise of a challenge. She had the look of someone who had spilled blood and would spill it again given the right motivation. As it was, this was business and he preferred to finish it quickly before the android with the suitcase decided to disappear just as mysteriously as she'd appeared.

He kicked off against her shoulder, using the extra push to yank his cane free from her chest. Blood cascaded down her body and wet the weapon's edge. Perhaps absence did make the heart grow fonder. Such a constant part of his existence and it had almost become a novelty to see so much of it again.

As he flicked the cane clean, the woman split completely in half from head to hip. The stream of heart's blood was replaced with a violent spray that shot into the air, gushed across the flower in bright splatters and showered down on V. His nose wrinkled and he raised a hand to shield his face from the more excessive splashes.

A completely new body sprouted from where the old one had already melted down into a red, soupy sludge as the center of the flower.

The woman was fully awake this time, face pinched by lines of pain that were mostly swallowed by her flinty glower. For a moment, they simply exchanged contemptuous looks. Him, looking down at her with the kind of annoyance even Griffon had not managed to arouse in him when they first met and her, somehow managing to look down her nose at him like something she wished she hadn't stepped in despite being half his size. Fresh blood dripped from both their faces and streaked their hair and was already drying on their bodies.

Without exchanging a word, V knew he was going to hate her and the feeling was going to be mutual.

"Was that fucking necessary?"

He drummed his fingers along the head of his cane and considered how long it had been since he'd been covered in gore. It came with the territory of killing devils, but he truly hadn't missed it.

"Don't ignore me! Who the fuck _are_ you?!"

Impatient. Foul. Loud. He couldn't tell if it was better or worse that Griffon wasn't here. At least he could've taken on the task of speaking her language with no need to involve V. "No one you should concern yourself with. I'm here to kill you. Nothing more."

"You're doing a shit job so far." Though she said as much, V noted her features soften and her shoulders drop as though the world had been lifted from them. "You got the tools to do it properly, or are you just gonna stab me for the hell of it again?"

"I wasn't expecting you to regenerate," he said, watching a trickle of blood run by his feet. "Much less so…spectacularly."

"You're telling me you made it all the way here and you have no idea what I am or how you're supposed to kill me?"

"The former is irrelevant to me and the latter…" He shrugged. "It's part of an agreement with a dragon. It's by her whim that I'm here."

"Ohhh, I get it now…" Her lips drew into a sneer. "You're an _errand_ boy."

He tapped the handle of his cane against his chin and cocked his head at her. "Was your regeneration painful?"

"What are you, a fucking idiot? Of course it—"

He pierced the cane through her a second time, in the exact same spot. Fresh blood spilled from her mouth down over her chin and neck. Between gurgles, she cursed him in combinations of expletives he'd never even considered before. She tore the cane out of her own chest with brutish strength and no regard for her own pseudo-mortality and immediately thwacked him across the face with it. He darted back enough to not be hit by her second swing, letting the handle smack harmlessly into his left hand.

Her eyes traveled the black ridges and violet valleys. With a ragged breath, she raised a single pointing finger toward it before she split in half and showered him afresh in blood.

Again, she was reborn.

Again, they stared at each other, all narrowed eyes and flattened lips.

He drew a long breath and pushed his fingers through his soiled hair. "Shall we try this again or—"

The screech she loosed shattered the air like the collapse of a glass skyscraper. Wind and a burst of pink light blasted him back and sent him tumbling over the edge of the flower. He righted himself in time to land on his feet in the salt.

The woman stood on the flower's edge. She'd managed to tear herself free from the flower's core and stared down at him, naked and drenched in blood. She tucked a strand of slick hair back behind her ear. "What's your name?"

"…V."

She was on the ground before he knew it, leaving spatters of red and kicked up salt in her wake. His cane took the worst of her strike, but it was no less explosive of a hit. He slid back so forcefully he had to drop to one knee and dig his claws into the salt to slow down.

She wagged her hand and set it on her hip. "Pretty stupid name."

No point arguing that, since it was never supposed to be a real name. He stretched his fingers, working the buzz of impact from them and wiping at his split lip. "You used to be human once, I take it."

"Long time ago; what's it to you?"

"How'd you end up here?"

"Poor life decisions," she deadpanned. "Look, I'm not real interested in giving you my life story, cane boy."

All the better for him. Both that she didn't want to weave the tale and that Griffon wasn't here to latch onto the opportunity to adopt that name. "Do you know an android that claims to be an observer? Black hair, glasses, carries a suitcase?"

"Accord's still around, huh…" She smirked in a faint, nostalgic way. "Yeah, I know her."

"She advised me to come here." He raised a brow. "Is it possible she was hoping to save you?"

"That's a good joke." She marched across the salt until she was standing over him. "I don't need to be saved. I don't need your pity. I don't even need _you._ What I need is your dragon. So stop fucking around and kill me or I'll split _you_ in half and spill your goddamn guts from here to the horizon."

The mark in the center of his palm stung. Red energy swirled along the empty lines of his tattoos and stretched up from his fingertips in long, wicked talons.

"That's more like it," she said approvingly, tapping at the flower in her right eye. "Come on. Don't fuck this up or I'll just regenerate."

The conclusion that this place was too clean to be hell may have been premature of him. The death she was asking for was a gruesome one. But he recognized the sort of profound exhaustion buried beneath that coarse exterior. She said she didn't need to be saved, but he suspected this place was no different than the inside of the Nelo Angelo armor, and death was very much her way out.

He rose to his feet. "A final question if I may?"

"Sure."

"There are flowers out there that look exactly like the one in your eye, but they're white and harmless. Is that your doing?"

"I have no fucking idea what you're talking about."

"...I didn't think so."

He drove his talons in through the center of the flower. Something squirmed against his fingertips and they snapped closed around it like jaws. A faint but piercing screaming shot through his senses and then faded away. He withdrew his hand quickly. She sank down and sprawled on her back in the sand, a red smear on a white landscape staring in the direction of the flowers as they twisted, blackened, and wilted into salt.

"Finally…" she whispered, her rose-colored eye rolling back as her last breath escaped. "It's quiet…"

* * *

V wasn't covered in blood, nor was there a split in his lip, though he felt a faint ache in his jaw.

The church was buried under a carpet of lunar tears glowing in the light rain. The threshold had collapsed, but Pod was still right where he had been before.

"GOOD MORNING, V."

"Where's the woman?"

A light feminine voice cleared its throat from just inside the snarl of roots at the clearing's edge. She was sitting out of the rain, her book held mindfully in her lap.

"The task is done," he said curtly. "Your advice?"

"You don't mince words, do you? Come have a seat, you've been gone a long time."

He trotted down out of the church. "How long?"

"REPORT: 68 HOURS."

He sighed and joined the android under the arch of a root, leaning heavily on his cane. "Well, _Accord_?"

She smiled approvingly. "It's the nature of a demon to be able to reach the soul of a thing, Mr. V. Congratulations on destroying this branch's only active Queen Beast."

"You told me I couldn't kill the gods."

"You can't. What you fought were Watchers…or Grotesqueries, depending on who you ask. Their relation to the gods is probably best understood if you think of them as angels. They work on behalf of the gods, but they aren't the gods, themselves."

His head tilted back and he closed his eyes. A headache was forming right between his brows. "And let me guess. Dragons are demons?"

"Dragons are dragons. It doesn't suit you to try and be cute, Mr. V, leave it to the professionals." She opened her book and flipped carefully through the pages. "I'll try to keep this short for you as a courtesy, but you should listen carefully."

"11,089 years ago, in the dimension your dragon originated from, there was an unexpected and catastrophic dimensional event. The same way you suddenly appeared in this world, a city suddenly appeared: The Cathedral City. With it came monsters, the dragons, and human access to magic. 150 years later, a major magical accident would reveal that an entity known as the Black Flower was also within the city. While it was mostly contained, a fragment did manage to escape. That fragment…" She plucked a lunar tear and held it up over one of her eyes. "Parasitized on the body of a freshly dead woman and made her an Intoner with the power of Song—the singularity Zero, who you had the pleasure of meeting."

"Not the word." Far from it. From the moment she opened her mouth it was like someone was trying to start a fire by grinding together two shards of unglazed porcelain. "You've never actually met her if you think it was a pleasure."

"Correct. The recorder in charge of her case made a sacrifice to ensure one of the timelines reached a successful conclusion. The Flower is an infection mechanism that spreads the power of Song. The immature form, the Intoner, can summon a single Watcher. The matured bloom causes the birth of a Queen Beast, whose song is limitless and can only be silenced by a dragon." She dropped the flower. "Unfortunately, the trouble with managing multiple timelines is that deaths can be sudden and a quarantine request does not always arrive in a timely fashion."

"In short, the Zero I met is the result of your failure to properly contain her."

"Blunt, but correct. Zero was aware of the danger of the flower. She considered it her responsibility to secure a path to her own death before it could fully bloom. There were certain obstacles. Defense mechanisms from the flower and in several cases, unexpected complications." She flipped a page in her book. "We are at the end of a timeline in which Zero died. Only 100 years after that is when your dragon and her original pact partner crossed to this dimension and caused the 6/12 incident. I've had suspicions for a long, long time that the giant who appeared was the Zero from a failed timeline, who was consumed by the flower."

"And you used me to be sure."

"I didn't have to. You and the dragon are part of each other now. They're the natural enemy of the Flower, you know."

"I don't, and you'll pardon me if I also don't understand how this information gets me back where I came from."

"This part is just to impress on you what you _shouldn't_ do." She held up a smooth black object he at first mistook for another seed, but upon closer inspection, it was merely a black pearl. "To put it bluntly, Mr. V, as long as the dragon exists in this world, there will always be maso and the gods will never be too far away. Because the gods made the dragons _and_ the Black Flower. So this goose chase where you try to re-enact the 6/12 incident? I needed you to lay Zero to rest for good and neutralize the Flower before you accidentally caused a cataclysm."

She threw him the pearl. He rolled it experimentally in his fingers. "So?" he said patiently. "What is my alternative?"

She clapped her book shut. "If you want to get home without ending this world, I propose that you do some digging and find the rest of the dragon's body."

His brows knitted. "It was lost thousands of years ago. No one knows what became of it."

"You knowing your history really does make this a lot more pleasant." She rose and lifted her suitcase. "Unfortunately, you know human history, and this has been an android world for many, many years. In 6230, 'dragon' weapons were tested in the kingdom of night. Surely someone in the Army of Humanity must have some record of the endeavor?"

"How is finding the dragon's body going to help me?"

"You want to create a tightly controlled opening to a specific dimension. It's not that it's impossible in this world, you just don't have that kind of magic. The dragon alone doesn't have that kind of magic either, but together you'll be able to make something happen."

"I don't favor endeavors that call on so much blind faith."

"It isn't faith. I already know it can happen. It always does."

He raised a brow and squinted down at her book. "Some wisdom from your records?"

She clicked open a pocket watch. "That conversation will have to wait. You have a message incoming."

His eyes flicked to Pod 042, but the support unit was quietly hovering right where he'd been the whole time. When V looked back, Accord was gone.

"Damn..."

"ALERT: HIGH PRIORITY TRANSMISSION RECEIVED FROM POD 153."

V pinched at the bridge of his nose. This day—these last _three_ days, apparently—had gone so exquisitely off the rails he found it hard not to laugh. A part of him hoped this transmission was 9S excitably calling to say something benign, the more banal and ridiculous the better. But life had taught him much better than to let hopes like that linger long enough to turn to disappointment.

"What is it _now_?"

The screen clicked open, but no video appeared in the usual space. It was pitch black, and V felt his shoulders tighten well before the message came through. It was an image of 9S, slumped lifelessly on the cobblestones of the throne room with a single line of text at the bottom.

**'Change of plans. Meet me in the throne room. —8E'**


	71. To Become Myself

**52 Hours Ago**

The pillar at the center of the network is more than white. Even from the bottom of the almost endless stairway, it shines a stark and brilliant light.

9S thinks carefully of nothing as he takes his first step. At the tenth, he wonders if V is gone or if he'll be waiting in the camp like nothing happened when 9S returns. At the fiftieth, he considers running, but can't force himself to move any faster. Around the two-hundredth, barely a tenth of the way, his chest constricts with the possibility that he may have read into No.2's interest in the pillar too much and that he will reach the top only for 2B to be nowhere in sight. Higher still, he is suffocated by the possibility that she _will_ be there.

N2 appears when he's halfway there. She's sitting on one of the steps—he's gotten too distracted to and lost count by then. Her chin nests in the palms of her hands, elbows propped up on her knees. She's looking past him, rather than at him.

He doesn't stop for her.

They repeat this process half a dozen more times. She materializes with her legs thrown out over the abyssal drop, observing her territory. Or lays back across several steps. Or floats off to the side of them. She stands with her arms behind her back or on her hip. Never a different facial expression. Each time, it's the same blank-faced stare. Each time, he passes her by like she doesn't exist. She's already proven that she can take the path to the pillar away from him if she really wants to. As long as she doesn't, there's no reason to acknowledge her.

The end of the staircase is in sight when he passes her again and her voice chases after him.

"You'd even let a human go for 2B?"

9S narrows his eyes and keeps his focus on the top of the staircase. The two things have nothing to do with one another. Even if a part of him (which part—his protocol or himself?) does hope that V won't be gone, it doesn't change much. That particular human is the stubborn, willful kind who can't be kept, much less let go of. One of the very first things that had been impressed on 9S was that V wasn't going to be cloistered away in a skyscraper even if it was for his own safety. V is doing what he has to. 9S is doing what he needs to. N2 knows all of this. There is no way she doesn't, and it needles at him why she asks questions she doesn't need answers to.

"It fascinates me," she answers. "I expected an android would cling to more to the source of its purpose. But you rejected it and then let it walk away from you."

With that, the pretense that she doesn't know exactly what's going through his mind ends. Not that it makes him want to talk to someone whose only interest is in observing his suffering.

"That is what perplexes me most about you, YoRHa Unit 9S. Your suffering is unnecessary. You know that there is nothing to fight for, yet you insist on living in the very world that created you to be sacrificed."

The end of the stairway is close, and N2 is just noise on the edge of his aural processor. His black box signal races. His internal temperatures rise. He imagines 2B. Remembers her.

"Is this about 2B?" N2 calls. Her already deep voice takes on a different quality—throaty, slow, and deliberate. "Or is this about how much you want to '****' 2B?"

9S freezes with his foot on the next stair. To give N2 the satisfaction of turning away from his goal would be too much like letting her win, but it does not stop his teeth from baring themselves, or the red haze that spreads from his chest to his fingertips and threatens to claw its way out.

"Don't." The word is a harsh hiss through clenched teeth. "Don't you dare."

N2 appears on the next stair up. 9S counts it a small mercy that she hasn't altered her form, but that hasn't stopped her from snatching a facsimile of V's cane straight from his memory to go with his stolen voice.

"Is the kind of person you like one who lies to you?" Her rhythm is maddening. It's a cryptic poem spoken smugly; a replication so perfect he can practically hear V's cocky grin. "You don't trust him any more than you trusted 2B. And he's a much poorer liar, isn't he? You went through all the trouble of telling him you hate the effect his humanity has on you… but conveniently omitted that you know his humanity is a lie, just like all the rest you've been told."

She presses the handle of the cane under his chin. The movement is correct down to the way the curve of the handle conforms to his jaw but that does not change how fundamentally wrong it feels to 9S. "You've changed less than you want to think, YoRHa Unit 9S."

"…So what?"

Her face flickers. The expression she makes is close to her usual blank stare, but her eyes are wider. She is surprised. For her, it's probably unthinkable that 9S would concede to someone he hates as much as he hates her.

The fists forming at 9S' sides loosen. N2's reasons for goading him don't matter, but the words she spoke to him the first time he entered here run through his mind. There is no reason for him to fight her, and she has only ever told him the truth in service to one purpose.

"You're the one who wanted to evolve so badly," he says, without fire or frigidity. "I don't care about reaching some kind of enlightenment or advancing until I'm not bound by my purpose. I just don't want to be alone. I've always hated being alone." He hesitates, but it feels to him that if he wants control over himself, he cannot continue to pretend he isn't full of his own duplicities. "I'll take whatever I can. Even a lie."

"Then why do you not just stay on the ark?" There is something strained in N2's voice. "You have all of 2B's memories. You have your memories of V. You have other androids. If a lie is fine, why do you insist on the world that commanded you to fight and die over this one?"

9S does not have an easy answer to that question—maybe that's why N2 has to ask and why she sounds so frustrated. When he searches himself and looks honestly at what he really wants, the answers he comes up with are simplistic but so blindingly close to his heart he can't imagine speaking them out loud.

But because he's thought them, N2 knows. About limonine and citrol and summer dandelions; and about poetry and laying others to rest and leaping into the new year. How they were all odd human things he didn't fully appreciate, but each one had made him feel something new and different and unspoiled. How he wants to share those things with 2B and see her smile—how he'd always wanted to see her _laugh_ and never did.

Nothing he wants can be acquired in the Ark.

N2's face flickers, but several seconds pass without a new appearance replacing the last. She drops the cane. A half-second of noisy static, there and gone, and he's alone again.

9S half expects the stairs to come apart and steal the way to the top from right beneath his feet, but it doesn't. There are less than a hundred left and his breath is short and his mouth dry and his body is too small to contain the sickly hopes and giddy terror threatening to overload him.

The top of the stairway looks familiar, but he knows those are the echoes of A2's memories. The altar where she found his data, so close to being absorbed into the network like everyone else's, is still there. Still occupied. By a figure he can only guess is seated.

"2B…?"

The black cubes of corrupted data are hard to make visual sense of. Its actions are chaotic and watery—at once it seems to turn its body toward him and yet make no move at all.

The world slows as his processing speed increases. Long expanses of silence fill the space between the click of his shoes, which hangs in his aural readouts longer than it should. The light as Virtuous Contract forms in his hand read like a firework bursting in slow motion on his periphery. Its silver edge glints at the bottom of his visual field as he rounds the figure, standing between it and the light. He reaches to where its head should be. The black blocks shift around his touch and reveal her face. Her eyes.

Between the strands of her hair, they shine red.

Someone had said it, though his mind was too occupied to remember who: 'Even if you stop the virus, if it's gone too far it's not like the damage will be undone'.

Thoughts flit through 9S without much energy. It doesn't seem fair, and it isn't, but he's already lost her before. When he compares the moment of walking along the bridge to see the life draining from her, finding this remnant of her data corrupted is…easier. He doesn't even have to exhaust himself wondering what might have happened if A2 hadn't been there. N2 was never going to take 2B in. Whatever the nature of the meta-network's obsession with him is, it's obvious even to him that she doesn't want to share him, least of all with 2B.

There isn't enough of this 2B to call her dynamic. There may not be enough of her to even call her static. All he can know conclusively is that there is enough of her in there that the moment she gained a fraction of awareness, she left his side to do what she had been doing when she died: Finding an isolated place where she couldn't hurt anyone. Where she couldn't hurt _him_.

Yet this piece of her still made her way to a place that reminded her of him, or of the memories it had been disconnected from.

"Like memories of pure light…" he whispered, staring at the reflection of the pillar in her eyes.

Nine long months since she had sent him away with nothing but the hope that he would live, and they were finally face to face again.

He places Virtuous Contract across her blocky lap and finds the shape of her fingers to help them curl around it, and the black shapes recede. Data twinkles like motes of dust in muted sunlight around her fists. He squeezes her hands a little tighter until her gloves split and faint hiss parts her lips.

Memories expand into the white space as he steps back. He watches them stretch out and unravel from where they had been compacted and compressed to fit the sword's storage limitations. It's all data, flat and impersonal. But so much of what flickers around them in preserved strings of footage are images of him. A thousand reflections of the versions of himself he has been. Life after life that was his but not his and she had been the beginning and end of all of them.

He spies a memory where he is surprisingly subdued with her. The moment they are alone in a secluded area, he swings first and catches her by surprise. That one is probably the first time he ever used Cruel Oath. He sees himself fight like a frightened animal backed into a corner. He sees himself cry and reach out to her, confused and unable to understand, even as she stands over him with sword in hand. He sees himself through her eyes, always meeting the same end whether he fights back, strikes first, gives his life willingly, or dies quickly and painlessly without any confrontation.

She tries so often and so hard to stop him but it's a futile effort whether she is kind or cold. 9S is a high-end model. His intense curiosity is as inevitable as her orders.

And now he sees the aftermath of those orders. He can differentiate the older from the newer by how long it takes her to dismember the body and reset his memory. In early deaths, it's easy. It's business. But she slows down over time. Makes the task mechanical and detached. He can almost hear her telling herself that emotions are prohibited. The mask cracks several times. She cries. She screams. It's more honest emotion than he has ever seen her show and again he feels the hot and cold of finally _knowing_ but hating that it had to be in this kind of way, under these circumstances.

He sees a fight. Them against machines in a castle. Her behavior is odd, and her memories run together. She's killed him in that place before. He says the same things he's said before. Even before it's clear she's contracted the logic virus, the weight of watching the patterns repeat has her in dangerously fragile condition. That version of him hacks in to save her, as he always does. But when he comes back, things are different. He's seen her mission.

She throws down her sword, exhausted, and asks to die by his hand instead. She frames it as giving back a mere fraction of what she has taken from him.

That version of him denies her request. While her eyes are closed and she waits for it to finally be over, he kills himself instead. 2B has to watch him bleed out where he has taken Virtuous Contract into his own hands. And with his dying breath, he utters the cruelest thing 9S has ever heard.

_Don't hesitate to kill me next time, because I…want to see you again…_

In full knowledge of her mission and her feelings, he'd made her keep going when she was already on the edge of breaking. That 9S isn't him, but they are enough alike that he understands. It's just as much an honest wish as it is a punishment.

He wonders if that's why she slipped and called him Nines in the castle.

A spark of curiosity draws him away from that thought. Hacking 2B to eliminate infection is simple and surface level, but in however many lives he's tried to defend himself or even kill her first, he must have known he couldn't win if he kept to physical attacks only.

It was possible that he carried pieces of her the same way he'd carried Adam and Eve and A2. The theory boils over inside of him no sooner than he thinks it. He has no idea if synaptic alignment could survive an execution process as rigorous as his, but he can look. He can try.

2B is still seated, staring at the sword with a dazed, blank expression. There isn't enough of her there for him to work with—most of what he's seeing is the reaction from Virtuous Contract. He rounds the altar and cups her face in his hands, hacking into himself instead. Anything he has done before, he is willing to do now if it gets him a little closer, even if it means exposing her to the core of his being.

The ground shifts beneath them both. The slab slips away and 2B is forced clumsily to her feet only to end up tumbling back onto a shape made of pure white walls. 9S lets her go and peeks down through a hole in the roof. The structure is still fractured and broken in places, but he recognizes his own personality core despite it being the closest to whole he's seen in nearly a year. He also recognizes the shape it has repaired into. It's the same smooth, angular, and empty structure he could find anywhere in the city—but this one he knows is the one he spent so much time with V in.

He glances back at 2B and hops down. The inside is empty, but he enters anyway. He isn't sure what he's looking for, only that he'll recognize it if it's there.

_'Goodbye, 2B.' _

There's a hole in the corner. A crack that hasn't repaired. Light seeps through it, and over and over, he hears that voice. His own. It's lodged in deep beyond in his reach. If it's in a place like this, it has to be more than just memory, but there's no deeper he can go. There's nothing left to hack into and he can't attack his own personality core.

But he thinks he knows a different way.

He climbs back out and she's right where he left her, with memories still playing kaleidoscopically around her.

"2B," he calls uncertainly. "It's me. It's 9S..."

Her lashes flutter over eyes still bright red, and he feels his heart jump. Her personality is in there, even if it's only the smallest bit. Even if she can't bridge the gap through the corruption, even if she can't integrate all of what's happening, she isn't beyond the sound of his voice. He helps her to her feet, overwhelmed by how many things he suddenly needs to say.

"It's over out there. The war. YoRHa. There's no Commander to give you orders. There's no reason for you to kill me anymore. Even though you did so many times, I still want to meet you again, 2B. I want to spend time with you again, just resting in a camp or by a stream, doing nothing, saying nothing. I want to find a t-shirt for you, like we promised."

"But I want everything I was, too. I need everything that led me to this moment. Everything you _took_ from me." It's hard to keep his voice modulated. An ache is spreading at the back of his throat, and his vision blurs as the writhing, loathsome feelings he's been harboring toward her creep toward the surface. "I understand how much it cost you. I know you had no choice. I want to forgive you so badly, but I can't, and I can't help these feelings. This… hate. Because the one who asked you to kill him wasn't me_._"

Her eyes slowly twitch up to his. It's hard to say if there is any recognition, but there is regret and that is just as good.

"If this is the last life I get, and I'm going to put it toward repairing you… I can't go on just pretending it isn't there; I've tried. Letting you kill me didn't work. It didn't do anything good for either of us. And I don't want to just…" The memory of the Soul Box scorches through him. Laughing and crying and lashing out at something in her shape. No virus to blame, only that frenetic impulse to protect his memory from anyone and anything by any means necessary even if it shattered him in the process. "I don't want to just do the same things as before."

_Is this about 2B? Or is this about how much you want to '****' 2B?_

He's caused himself more than enough grief trying to pretend it's ever been just one or the other of those things. Hating her and wanting nothing else than to be with her. Wanting to destroy her and wanting to be destroyed by her. Even her desire for him to live, while being duty-bound to be the one to kill him—she must be full of her own contradictions as well.

Cruel Oath materializes in his hand, and he holds his other out to her. He can repair 2B without this fleeting scrap of her, or the pieces of her lodged too deep in his data for him to get to. But he doesn't want to. Even if it's agony for both of them, their memories are all they have. The closest they can get to souls. It isn't something that should be let go of so easily.

The smile on his face is weak but overflows with warmth. "Let's go together this time, okay?"

Her lips part. Motion takes her a long time and an intense concentration of her disjointed will, but she puts one hand around Virtuous Contract's hilt and lays the other in his waiting hand.

He's thought many times in his bitterest moods that this is how it should have been that day at the bridge. He's wondered if 2B didn't trust him to kill her because of the difference in their models, or if she just didn't want him to have to do that because she knew what it was like. She really was always so stiff. For him, it was so much simpler than any of that.

The one to kill her should have been someone who would bother to cry for her. The way she had for him.

They press close until they're chest to chest. He rests his head against her shoulder and there is neither warmth nor cold, but she's solid. Present. She might only be a corrupted snatch of consciousness resonating with the memories left behind inside Virtuous Contract and inside him, but that is enough for him. The person he's been longing for all this time is still there in the way leans her cheek against his hair. In her quiet sigh that seems relieved as Cruel Oath slides at her back.

Her hand rests, strong and steady, at the bottom of his back, and he finds his pulse rate increasing as he does the same.

As both an apology and an expression of what he finds so hard to translate into words, he doesn't rely on her. She's done this so many times, just once she shouldn't have to. It's difficult. The weapon obeys the laws of form in a memory space this articulated, and he can feel the resistance of her internal plates. Wires splitting. Metal scraping. Then there is a half-second of give that brings the point through her and he flinches instinctively at the unexpected pain as it pierces his abdomen. His protocols cause him to hesitate. He's harmed himself and sought death in dozens of ways, but this is direct and physical.

2B pushes Virtuous Contract through him with terrifying ease. Their abilities and limitations, even now, are worlds apart. Alerts fill his vision. His hacking connection runs frantic auto-disconnect routines, but he overrides them and clings on. Through gritted teeth, he finishes pushing his own blade through his body. Until the gold edge pushes out through his back, and the black hilt presses to her skin. Memories flood through him. Through them. His grip tightens as they both sink to their knees and he tries to enforce order on the crashing waves of information and memory. Extracting the uncorrupted parts of 2B's data and disentangling the memories he needs from Virtuous Contract with care to only take what's his even if it's all seen through her eyes. His deaths. His choices. His times with her.

Her head droops. Her body slackens, weighing down onto him. The taste of oil fills his mouth, but still he holds on.

They're connected. Not by orders or fate or by the cruelty of the cycle trapping them, but by their own volition. By memory, and by the red oil that mingles at the core of their embrace and stains the pure white space as they kneel in one last, shared prayer.

It's all just data, but that's all they ever were. It's real to 9S. It will be until he breaks down.

Over 2B's shoulder, a white blade and a black and gold hilt protrude from the delicate curve of her back. She breaks down into white light, the fragment of her vanishing safely into the confines of Virtuous Contract.

No aural disturbance registers, but her voice passes through his mind like a fading light.

_..Ni…nes…_

* * *

He jerked awake into the too-real world. A cool early spring breeze and warming sunlight paralyzed him, blocking his retreat from a rising deluge of sensory information. 4S was nearby. In his face. Asking something. Shouting something.

Pain was all that made any sense to 9S. 4S' voice, the black of his uniform, the blue of his eyes, the scent of grass and unbloomed flowers, the bitter slickness of oil lingering like a phantom in his clean mouth, endless alerts, alerts, alerts making excruciating static of his whole body. The clarity of it only made it sharper against the blurred mess of his other senses.

Something pricked his arm. The pain receded and he was left alone to huddle in on himself like a dying insect on the cold, white carbon. A vast jumble of memories filled his mind. They weren't organized yet, but they were all his own.

He flinched as a hand reached into his crumpled, fetal shape. It grabbed his own and squeezed. Just enough to create a single, constant sensory input.

4S' dripped over him like heavy sap. From deep amid information overload, it felt like entire days passed before 9S grasped what was being said. 4S was trying to get him to relax his body so the nanomachine stimulant could circulate properly and aid his recovery. Hacking damage wasn't 1:1, but that didn't make the repercussions less severe.

Stretching himself back out was an effort of enormous will but eventually, he managed to lie flat, staring so blindly at the ceiling he didn't even register Iota's mark on the ceiling.

4S' voice inched across the space between them. "Did you find her…?"

9S closed his eyes. Asking 2B wasn't much of an option, but a basic query through all the new data would do. The one answer that he'd been chasing ever since he first entered the ark... Not how many times he'd died. That wasn't what mattered. Not really. What mattered to him was how many times he'd met 2B for the 'first' time, and the query quietly returned him that answer in crisp, black, impersonal font:

**48**

He managed a laugh that was almost light-hearted and burst into tears.


	72. Birth of a Wish

**23 Hours Ago**

**25 March 11946 4:06 AM – The Ark**

Healers possess similar base abilities to scanners. However, their hacking ability is largely tuned toward diagnostics, data replication, and deep dives that even 9S would not be able to match. They lack the curiosity of scanners, so they don't pick at potentially sensitive information while they are at work on other units. What they have instead is a strong urge to preserve others, if not their body then their memories at minimum. An exact opposite of the function of Executioners.

There are only two H-type units left now, and they are sharing a grim look.

12H is a field healer. She's been on missions with 2B in the past and seems genuinely invested in aiding an old squadmate, but 9S occasionally catches tightness under her eyes. She is one of the models who vocally wants to be out of the Ark, and she doesn't examine the scan so much as she glares at it from above her tightly crossed arms. Knowing that her existence is important if any of them are ever going to get out, it must grate on her to see 9S pursuing 2B's restoration.

32H is a field healer as well, but the kind who enjoyed regular stations at ground-based defense HQs. There is a gentleness to her round face even as her eyes dart seriously over the scan of 2B's body. If she is anything like 32S, she will do anything and everything to help, even if it risks her own well-being. Most likely, that insistence on placing others before her is the reason she ended up consumed by the virus and made it to the Ark.

The doubt on their faces doesn't worry 9S, but he wonders whether these two would be able to handle moving all the other YoRHa in the future.

"You must be used to things not being easy," 32H says with a consoling smile. "Her wound let water into her, which wouldn't be the worst thing, but there's some pretty severe damage due to ice forming in her chassis."

"You can get away with repairing some of the sturdier components, but her motherboard is trash and her black box is unusable." 12H let her arms slump back to her sides. "I'll be frank, this job is above a scanner's abilities."

9S' eyes narrow and 32H takes a subtle step that places her between them. "She's unfortunately correct, 9S. We can give you our repair protocols if you want, but that isn't the same as being specialized, the same as your combat abilities don't put you on the same level as a Battler unit. Even then, there's no Bunker. The machinery that facilitated repairs of this level as well as the detailed information about our bodies and how they need to be constructed to operate in harmony with the Black Box… Those essentials are no longer available."

If it was 7H, she would have been able to do the job by hand with her all her sensory systems turned off, but 9S keeps that thought to himself. 7H was Head of R&D and it isn't fair of him to compare anyone, much less two ground healers, to her.

Besides, 32H is right. He is used to things not being easy.

"I understand," he says with the quick, decisive tone of a soldier. "Can you give me a list of all the parts she needs? As comprehensive as possible."

32H smiles and 12H huffs, but both agree.

* * *

**25 March 11946 10:10 AM – Oil Field**

9S had no business at this abandoned corner of the desert, but neither did anyone else. That was precisely why he'd come out so far.

The YoRHa units whose E-drug laced bodies had been strewn out on the stones were gone. They were either among those who attacked the camp, or the camp's efforts to destroy YoRHa bodies as a precaution against further 'legion' activity had already seen them gathered up and thrown into furnaces. Their components would likely have been cooked beyond viability after this long out under direct desert sunlight anyway.

He was there for the transporter.

Hacking in was simple. The routes were all the same ones he'd taken the first time he tried to trick the transporter into giving him another body. The final juncture stymied him this time. The mechanism wasn't willing to accept anything but the active reading from his ID circuit. No matter how much fussing and fight he did, it wouldn't yield. It was like trying to find a way around a fissure while buried at the bottom of it. The structure of the program itself denied any means of bypass.

Frustrated by the lack of progress, he infiltrated deeper to search for a way to alter the program. But that was a little too bold. The moment he started tampering, failsafe protocols ejected him with a local jamming signal and a red barrier enveloped the vending machine façade.

He expended nearly twenty minutes alternately thinking of a way he could get through that barrier and wondering if it would self-correct and realize he wasn't a machine. Neither of those efforts was rewarded.

"Damn…"

"WARNING," Pod 153 announces. "JACKASS IS ON-SITE AT THE DESERT OUTPOST TODAY."

A sickly gurgle caught in the back of 9S' throat. It was inevitable that Jackass would find out he'd tampered with her machinery again, but that didn't mean he wanted to be there for it.

While checking over his shoulder, he crossed the dunes to the other transporter at the desert center and made himself scarce.

* * *

**25 March 11946 10:44 AM – Amusement Park**

The gaily painted stubby tottered around the plaza next to the broken tilt-a-whirl. Beneath the makeup, it's face was still a maw of sharp metal edges and gnashing cylindrical teeth.

Inside of it, there were cables. _Pristine_ cables.

The machine passed within reach of 9S, but Cruel Oath remains motionless at his side in a vise-tight grip.

Disinterest in killing machines had been normal for him since the Tower fell. He'd still done it as needed, but the part of him that once wanted every single one of them dead had gone numb and never recouped. Considering he was supposed to be an elite military android, it wasn't clear to 9S whether that meant he was broken or not.

"F-funnnnn…. Haaaaappyy-y-y—"

He winced and involuntarily took a step back. There was nothing unclear about the sludgy weight settling low in his stomach. Indifference might not have meant anything, but such an oily discomfort at the prospect of killing a machine probably meant he was junk. It should have been such a quick and easy thing. He'd seen machines kill one another or ask_ him_ to kill one of them when they needed components that weren't innate to their particular model. Whether a YoRHa was the same or different than a machine, they all needed parts to live. It wasn't any different from humans killing for food, was it?

The need to rationalize it at all made 9S let go of the sword. Getting 2B back wasn't impossible. She was an android; it was a matter of fulfilling the right conditions and connecting the right wires. But he didn't want to make it happen like this. Everything he'd learned pointed to the No.9 personality as the type to get impulsive and reckless when it was for someone important, and more than all the technical details of trying to repair 2B, it was most difficult for 9S to not lean into those behaviors.

V had stared at the same scenery and listened to Pod 042 drone through the archives for all of autumn and on through the new year. It wasn't that he hadn't been impatient about it at times, but when it came to the archives he never let impatience make any decisions for him. Granted, he also straightforwardly went after anything he wanted without much consideration for whether it would be dangerous or if it would hurt someone. The trait that had brought V to the other side of the bay to rescue 9S had also caused him to rip his own son's arm off.

9S hung the memory close to the front of his mind, equal parts guiding light and warning sign, and left the damaged but peaceful machine alone.

* * *

**25 March 11946 11:32 AM – Machine Village**

The machine village was almost identical to the way it was before. The bodies and parts that had clogged the walkways were gone. The air still smelled faintly of cold ash, but it was hard to catch a whiff of over the bright chlorophyll pop of new leaves and budding flowers that reached out with all their might from the extremities of the burnt but recovering trees.

"_To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man..._"

Pascal too was almost identical to the way he was before. 9S followed the sound of his voice and found him seated in the same shack as before, with a book in his hand and a stack of six more beside him. He lifted his head and his aggressively green eye lights blinked twice in rapid succession.

"Oh! Hello, 9S." He closed the book and sat it atop the rest. "I heard the true culprit was finally captured. We were able to preserve peace and find a solution by working together. It's truly a wonderful step for relations between machines and androids."

"Yeah…" 9S gurgled, trying not to think about the precipice he'd been on barely an hour ago. "I have a material request for you if you don't mind?"

"Of course! Let's see… Three dozen small gears, ten elaborate gadgets, six sockets, twenty meters of pristine cable, and a liter of natural rubber. Oh my, that's quite the request. What exactly are you making?"

"I'm trying to repair someone important to me. A YoRHa unit." Pascal's green eyes flickered, and 9S couldn't help but feel self-conscious. "I know it's…a lot. And that most of those components come from machines. I don't want to do anything that would mess up the treaty so—"

"I understand," Pascal said, so gently that 9S couldn't hear anything but the unspoken forgiveness. "Resource scarcity is one of the reasons I first began to reach out to androids. I assume so, at least. The resistance members came right up to me with no fear at all while I was trying to clean up the village, just like you did, only they were there about a trade. Isn't that wonderful? There's truly so much we can do for one another."

"Pascal…" It wasn't his business, but he was already there, and he couldn't resist. "Do you remember anything at all from before the Tower appeared?"

"Well, let's see. I woke up in the factory to a scene of quite some carnage. A dozen or more of the small models were all over the floor."

A2's image flashed behind his eyes and he lowered them from Pascal's. Why did he feel guilty? Why did he feel _responsible_? "Was it… by an android?"

"No, it was the strangest thing. It almost looked like they had taken their own lives."

9S gripped at his choker, his throat bobbing just above his grip. He could have wrapped his mind around A2 killing them. It was reasonable, even natural, that she might have cut through the machine village if she found it. She'd killed an infant machine where even he and 2B had paused to consider if it was necessary; he couldn't imagine her being fazed by killing all the machine children. But them taking their _own_ lives? That raised too many questions and the only silver lining was that Pascal didn't remember the answers to any of them so he didn't feel compelled to press the subject.

"How long do you think it will take to get all that?" he asked, glad to change the subject. "_Can_ you get all that?"

"I can, but please understand that it may take some time."

"That's fine." The list was only for the things that needed repairing. He still had to pursue the parts that needed replacement, and he already knew where he was headed for that. "I've got plenty of time."

* * *

**25 March 11946 4:53PM – City Ruins**

It had been a long time since 9S stood before the copy of his body. This time, he was not alone.

"Are you mad?"

4S wobbled his head in a way that doesn't offer a hard yes or no. What 9S is proposing could've solved 11S' issues a long time ago. That thought must be going through 4S' mind because it's taking up disproportionate space in 9S'. "I'd have cut a duplicate of my body open for 11S' parts ages ago, but I can't really say I'd have done the same for you…" He glanced aside. "No offense."

"No, no..." 9S made a lifeless gesture toward the body. Dust had settled on it after so many months of neglect. The hair was more gray than white, and there was a filmy, blurred quality to the black color of the uniform. Slumped down with its missing arm and shabby uniform, it resembled an abandoned doll. "Clearly, I get it."

"I'll say my thanks you're doing it now instead of never and leave it at that. I've never hung around duplicate models before. It's really..." 4S rubbed at the empty spot where his other shoulder should have been. "Just hurry up, I think my recognition processes are starting to misfire."

_Is that a normal reaction to duplicate models…?_

A2's face being the same as 2B's had always irritated him—it was strange to see a similar reaction from someone else under more mundane circumstances. Not unpleasant, though. It made him feel a little less embarrassed about the strangely possessive relationship he had with this mirrored body. If 4S was experiencing a recognition issue, maybe 9S really couldn't separate himself from it because it looked just like him?

Asking that, even in the privacy of his own mind, opened a door and let a parade of theories, memories, and recontextualizations come barging in on his thought routines. Whether he could or couldn't see the spare body of his as a separate entity, his behavior with it was a dark spot that he didn't fully understand and didn't think he wanted to.

That particular evidence of his previous instability was one it was probably best _not_ to elaborate on. "Do you uh… want the arm?"

4S' eyes pinched in a sympathetic but suffering expression that at once acknowledged the situation as awkward and messed up, but also begged him to keep it together. "Thanks… but I'd rather not have two right arms, Nines."

"Oh, right—I mean…!"

They both looked away from each other rather than waste their energy trying to make things less uncomfortable than they were.

The resistance camp had been very thorough under Theta and Gamma's mobilization. 9S had been to pretty much every sector in the area and hadn't seen a single YoRHa body anywhere. He still thought it was for the best, but it made the pool of parts he could scavenge from non-existent. Even pillaging his own duplicated body wasn't going to give him everything he needed, hence his visit to Pascal. Someone had the bright idea that male and female base models should be specialized at the hardware level after female scanners stopped being a thing. Another stupid design choice in 9S' opinion.

But from the open chest panel, he was able to pull key components that he would not find anywhere else: A blank-slate black box and a fully operational motherboard already complete with YoRHa standard microprocessors and chipsets. Without those, there was no chance at booting 2B at all. Disassembling a body that was functionally his was gruesome, yet a giddy surge spread that spread like a smile through his systems.

Humans were always going on about giving their hearts to others, and he was giving _two_ function-critical components to her.

"Are you sure about not telling Iota?" 4S asks. "It would be easier to repair 2B with her help."

9S has considered the same thing, but every time he thought about it, he remembered Theta's words of advice to him. Whatever he chose to do, he should not assume her goals and his were in alignment. Iota was performing a job in repairing 11S. With permission and with payment. At the end of the day, she was still an officer who answered to Theta. Thinking of Iota as a friend and getting comfortable enough to tell her they're working on reviving a combat unit would be a mistake. 9S was undecided on many things about this repair process, but not that.

"It would also be easier to repair her if we had the data that Iota has," he countered. "Even Gamma and Theta have a pretty comprehensive understanding about the maintenance and structure of our bodies. Iota probably knows more than the H units we have left."

"You think we should ask her for it?" No sooner than he said it, he waved his hand dismissively. "No… Never mind. It's classified info, she wouldn't give it up."

"Maybe it shouldn't be that way," 9S said slowly. He stood and handed over a few sub-processors and extraneous components that would make it far easier to complete 11S' restoration. "Before we knew there were Healer units in the ark, we couldn't even identify what 11S needed without Iota. If we don't have that data, won't we be relying on her forever every time we need a serious repair?"

Behind 4S' eyes, something clicked into place. Both of them were aware that they are YoRHa among other androids who had strong feelings about them, but this wasn't about the mere act of surviving socially. Access to the fine details of their own data, even if it was formally classified, was a matter of tangible, physical survival. At the same time, both of them were realizing the reality of their existence. It had always been far above their heads and outside their sphere of concern, but android society had an economy. Their bodies were an expense to someone_. _An itemized list of operating costs, repair costs, maintenance costs, production costs.

Both of them looked down at the components in their hands. Components they both knew they needed for people important to them, but which neither of them knew the first thing about acquiring (without scavenging), manufacturing, or installing properly.

How were any of them going to survive in a world that might not want them if they didn't have that data?

4S eyes took on the ember-bright glow they only showed when he felt someone was standing between him and his friends. "I'm going back to camp."

"I have to dispose of… this." 9S lifted the hollowed-out body up onto his shoulders. It was rapidly cooling without a black box to power it. "I'll be back at camp later. Be careful."

* * *

**25 March 11946 9:06 PM – Resistance Camp**

9S paused as he entered the camp. He scanned the shop area, the repair bay… Nothing. He strained his aural processors, but the noise that followed Griffon around was absent.

V wasn't there.

Pod 042 hadn't turned up either though. That had to mean something, didn't it? He started to ask Pod 153 if there were any messages or updates, but all that left him was a sigh. That wasn't where his mind needed to be. He'd told V where he would be, and they'd said their might-be goodbyes. If he was still around, he'd show up. No need to overthink it or keep checking every dark corner hoping to see him.

_Don't be impatient,_ he reminded himself. _Don't get restless._

With a deep, steadying breath, he entered his loaned room and carefully stowed the materials from his body in the corner box. While he watched it dissipate into the molten vats in the factory, he'd comes to a decision. If anything happened to him, he wanted 2B to still be able to be repaired. He hadn't come up with a good person trust with the task yet—it wasn't like it could be YoRHa if the final protocol was still in place.

As he left the room, he noted that the command tent was closed. That was…weird.

He rushed into the scaffolding area. 4S was right where 9S expected him to be, but his arm was wrapped tight around his midsection and he was pacing at 11S' bedside.

"Did something happen?" 9S asked.

"Not sure. I asked Iota for the data and… She made a big fuss about asking for permission from Theta, which I expected, but that was hours ago. I haven't seen her since."

"I haven't seen any of the army androids at all and the command tent is closed…"

The air fizzed with the situational analyses they were both running, and they shared nervous looks as they came to equally worrisome conclusions.

"I don't like this." There was a familiar urgency to 4S' lowered voice. "I don't like this. We got the components into 11S, and he's stable. Maybe we should boot him and get out of here?"

"Get out of here? 4S I think they're suspicious too, but that's a bit much isn't it?"

"Says the guy who won't tell them about 2B," 4S hissed, quietly but scathingly. "I want 11S to be safe and I'm getting a really bad feeling."

"…Woman's intuition?"

He nodded gravely. "Woman's intuition."

Once more, they were in suspicious territory that might spring an enemy on them, and they didn't have the luxury of coming back in a new body.

9S checked 11S' readouts. He was in the best condition he'd been in since they found him. If they were going to make a precautionary run for it, there was no better time to make a move. "Alright. I'll hack in and re-establish the link between his consciousness and personal data and have Pod reboot him. You get him disconnected from all this while I'm in. You know where we're going?"

"I just want to put some distance between the camp and us. If I'm being nervous for no reason, we can go to the ark and it won't look like we just ran away, but I don't like how quiet it's all gotten around here, and these androids have been doing nothing but burning YoRHa bodies ever since the attack. Plus, I'd like 11S to hear everything from 1S. I think that'll help him…digest it best."

9S didn't envy 1S that job at all.

* * *

**25 March 11946 9:28 PM – 11S**

It's strange to experience a typical hack after so much time in the machine network. Rather than a body, 9S is projected a mobile kernel of his consciousness data, securely closed inside the diamond shape of his defensive barriers.

11S' systems are clean and white but dimmed by his condition. His fresh repairs have done little to solve the massive trauma caused by interrupted suspension and personal data lock clashing against one another. From the inside, it's not a complicated problem so much as a heavily guarded one. 11S kept his defense systems updated as near to the second as he could get, and bursts of orange and violet attack patterns erupted the moment 9S goes beyond his surface systems.

Mostly, he tries to avoid them. The last thing he wanted was to cause any damage when they're so close to repairing him.

It isn't hard to identify the issue once he's deep enough. Visualizations are rarely identical between YoRHa—personality data takes on shapes of its own according to experience. For 11S, the suspension program is a set of enormous doors slamming against the sides of a vault that has already been closed but does not appear to be locked. It can't be, or it would have been long gone already.

9S glides smoothly between the two programs. There is an order of operations to be followed here, but his manual doesn't offer much for a situation as unique as this. He's good, but not good enough to be in two places at once. If he deals with the suspension first, there is a high probability that the lockdown will proceed uninhibited and they'll get 11S back in his default state. Starting with the lockdown is less risky, but it does mean they'll have to boot him up quickly before his memories start to leak out. Without the Bunker, even the backed-up ones might as well be volatile.

9S has no gloves to tug into place or fingers to flex, but he nonetheless prepares himself. "Pod, can you be ready to boot Unit 11S as soon as I cancel the personality lockdown?"

"AFFIRMATIVE."

It's a task that requires more of 9S' skill than anything in the ark did. Locking down data is not a simple choice or a simple process and trying to force it to stop is like trying to pull tree roots up from the earth with nothing but his bare hands. Aggressive override after aggressive override, while he dodges an increasingly dense barrage from defense systems that recognize him as intruder first and YoRHa second.

9S loses one of his defensive barriers and narrowly avoids losing the second when an advanced targeting protocol activates, chasing his shape with slow but persistent menace. He takes the time to eliminate it—it's too much of a problem to ignore.

When the last barrier is out of his way, he finally reaches the base executive function and it takes only a few attacks to destroy it. The vault melts away instantly, leaving behind the white walls of his personality core. His memories scatter like black marbles, disorganized and undefended in the absence of active consciousness protocols.

The doors shift and begin to close in earnest around the entire core while 9S rushes to stop the program.

"ALERT: REBOOT SEQUENCE INITIATING."

9S has never been this deep in a unit while they are booting. A light show greets him as various systems come back online and show the full expanse of 11S' inner network, blinking on like bulbs illuminating an old warehouse. The more they come online, the easier time 9S has shutting down the suspension program. It's an adaptive emergency system and now that 11S is booting, there's no need for it.

He hits one last control system, and the doors stop. Slowly, they retract back into the walls and disappear as though they were never there at all.

* * *

**25 March 11946 9:40 PM – Resistance Camp**

9S reconnected with his body only to be immediately greeted with the sensation of 4S squeezing his hand.

"All good," he said reassuringly. "He should be waking up any second now."

4S immediately switched to crushing 11S' hand, and 11S grunted in response. It was such a little thing, but 9S found his pulse rate speeding up.

11S' eyes squinted open. His cameras whirred noisily, and he jerked his head away from the light as he took in his first visual data in a long, long time. Tears spilled out of his eyes. Not emotional ones, just lubricant that cleaned out wads of gummy gunk that must have settled on his lenses. He opened his mouth, but only a thin trickle of static escaped.

"11S?"

His eyes opened and closed like it required all the power in his black box, but he managed to focus on 4S. And then on the empty space where 4S' arm wasn't.

"Ah…" he said in a tinny croak. "Arm…?"

"That's the first thing you say?" 4S laughed, but his voice shook as he threw his arm tightly around 11S' neck. "Worry about yourself, dumbass!"

11S' eyes wandered around. From 9S to the scaffolding to the cloudy sky. He managed to sit up with a sound like an old piece of construction equipment creaking in the sea breeze. "Wh…ere…?"

"The Resistance Camp, but not for long. Just take it easy, we've got you." 4S stood up straight and turned to 9S. "Let's get him out of here."

* * *

**26 March 11946 12:25 AM – The Ark**

11S is recovering quickly, as expected. His body is full of fresh components and he's been in professional care for weeks. Now that he's been booted, he's only getting sharper with every passing moment. Exposing 11S to the strain of the frequency might the best idea, but it was better that he finds everything out in this contained area where all his friends were.

9S is just grateful he doesn't have to act as a tether while the other scanner gets caught up on every terrible thing that's happened while he was in pseudo-suspension. It was still in the distance, but he's eventually going to have to tell 2B, and the idea of giving her so much bad news makes his chest ache.

He tries to distract himself with a task list, but there isn't one. He has core components stored safely. He has a request out for the other parts 2B will need. The data the Army of Humanity has, or failing that, someone who can put 2B back together properly—that's what he needs.

But there's still the final protocol to consider.

He already knows if he tells the others, they will only have one response. It's the one he would have if he were in their place. It was a more peaceful world than ever before, but Theta had made it very clear that 9S' existence was a tight-rope over dangers he barely understood. He had enemies, and they weren't machines.

"Not like you to hang back like this."

9S looks up to see 3S has managed to walk up behind him. The older model sits beside him and 9S wonders briefly if he knows about the final protocol. Unlikely. His clearance was special, but it didn't even give him access to the subject of the black boxes.

"Thanks again," 9S offers. "For telling me about No.2."

3S gives an easy, sleepy laugh. "Don't give me so much credit. I just gave you an address. You went out and got what you needed."

3S' behavior is fine today. It's strange. One day he seems as careless as ever, the next he's miserable, it's like… It's like how 9S would always smile extra bright and be his most bouncy, energetic self whenever he was frustrated by 2B's paradoxical conduct toward him.

9S' visual field does not physically adjust, but 3S comes into a focus so sharp it's like 9S has never seen him before. In a sense, he hasn't.

"Something on my face?" 3S asks with a relaxed grin.

"…Can I ask your advice?"

"Hmm? You can, but you know 4S is the one who's good at matters of the heart."

"I think you'll understand better. Because you carried a heavy burden for a long time. On the Bunker, and here too, always making sure there's a functional place all our memories could return to where they would be safe."

3S eyes him from behind a perfect mask of faintly confused curiosity. 2B could only dream of being that convincing. "You're a good guy, 9S. You always are. But you have what you want. You don't owe it to any of us to take on the risk of getting us out of here. Get 2B fixed up and go somewhere with her."

"I found out there's one more protocol in the YoRHa plan." The mask drops from 3S' face. A blank space with stony edges is left behind. "A trigger that's meant to cause the pods to erase all of our data entirely. Even if it means killing those of us that are alive. Maybe even destroying this ark now that it's known that you guys are in here. I don't know what that trigger used to be, but right now it's me. Because I was still fighting or trying to bring down the Tower—I don't know, but it seems I got us a bit of an extension after the Bunker fell."

"When did you find this out?" The sleepiness that permeates 3S' voice evaporates. As 9S thought, it's been a façade all along. Something to help him deal with knowing what he did for as long as he had. The person 3S is underneath that harmless, airheaded front is a stranger whose voice courses with both authority and danger. "Am I the first to know?"

"Yeah. I only found out just a few days ago." He plucks at his gloves. "You said I'm a good guy, but I wonder if that's true. I don't really want to tell them. I don't want to feel obligated to help because they asked. I went through a lot of trouble just to feel like I was fully in control of my own decisions, and I don't want to be swayed by something like two-hundred of you telling me I should stick to what's safe or solve the problem."

"Are you asking me to forgive you or something?"

"Not really. I guess I'm asking what you would do if you were me."

3S's eyes clouded and he shook his head. "You don't want to be swayed, but you care about what I would do? What makes my opinion so important?"

"Because…" He curls in on himself a little. "You and 801S are like me and 2B, right?"

The last of 3S' carefree warmth drains from him like oil being washed away by rain. For a moment, 9S thinks the older model is going to swing on him. He outdates modern NFCS restrictions, and it would be no surprise for him to have had a weapon all along.

But all he does is heave an irritated sigh and rub at his eyes. "Nobody around here has a relationship like you two, Greenhorn. Even if we did, I'm not you and 801S isn't 2B."

Is the alternate nickname to create distance or invite him closer? 9S isn't sure. "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean better than _you_ do," he growls. "You already know what you intend to do. What you want is to feel like you're doing the right thing, or the normal thing—you want to feel justified because there are only two answers to this problem: Risk your life or run away, and both of those can end with all of us dead. But 2B is what you really care about and she is already dead and that's ultimately the deciding factor. It's the safest possible place she could be, and you know it and it's killing you because she's _right there_. A repair away. But if you don't fix this problem, her life ends when yours does and that's unbearable, isn't it? Stop being so wishy-washy. All those times you've felt like shit cause this world is terrible and god's not listening, and you've wished you could change it? Pack all that up in your black box and burn it for fuel. Carve out a place she can get at least one godforsaken thing she wants, even if it's just to continue living. And if that requires you to take risks or break rules or kill, so be it. Clear the way for the life you think she deserves.

**That's** what I'd do if I was in your shoes and 801S was on the line."

9S finds himself leaned back against the unexpected intensity of the eldest scanner. As he slowly comes back to a normal resting position, he licks his lips and chooses his words with extreme care. 3S had managed to be very right and very wrong at the same time.

"Uhm… Thanks. Those are all really good points I had sort of considered, but not as…seriously. You were right—we're not as alike as I thought. Your motives are really sophisticated." He spares a small, awed laugh. "I guess that's the difference in our age showing?"

3S glares at him quizzically. "You are going to do something about the protocol, right?"

"Yeah."

"Ahead of fixing 2B?"

"That's really the only smart way to approach it."

"And it isn't for any of the reasons I stated."

The thought would make 9S blush if he hadn't turned the functionality off. It was far too romantic. "No!"

"…Then what the hell?"

"It's kind of embarrassing after you gave such a passionate answer…" He smiles warmly, but a little sheepishly. "2B made a lot of requests of the old versions of me, but in the end, she was the only one who ever kept our promises. If this is the last life I get, I want to work hard and grant her wish this time."

"Her wish…?"

"For me to become a good person."

3S stares at him for a long stretch before dragging his fingers down his face and tossing them up in surrender. He sounds like he's laughing, but it's hard to tell if the sound is a good thing or a bad one.

"I swear, you 9 models are such…_idiots._ Do you even know what you need to do or where you need to go?"

"I have a theory." A few dozen meters away, 11S starts to yell. He's always been a sort of blunt, confrontational type for a scanner. "I think I'm gonna get going and let you all deal with…that."

"You mean let _me_ deal with telling them this information," 3S says shrewdly.

9S pretends not to hear him as he disconnects.

* * *

**26 March 11946 1:01 AM – City Ruins**

9S sat up on the cold white carbon, rubbing at his eyes and trying to shake away the disorientation as he fumbled past the pod. The signal faded as he passed beyond its short range, and out into the daylight where he could re-orient in peace. If this was what being groggy was like, no wonder V looked so awful whenever he didn't sleep well.

He looked up at the sky. It looked like it could rain any minute.

"Hey, kid."

That voice...

His threat-response systems snapped online all at once and brought the world into sharp focus. He darted away from the sound, turning with a hand stretched out to hack in. Above him. Standing atop a pile of blocks with a face splashed in fresh red oil. She wasn't out of range, and the hacking connection stabilized, but there was already something falling down into the pit with him.

The seconds slurred together. Their equally blue eyes met in the muted light, his hacking interface racing the detonation he knew was coming.

_8E...!_

An electromagnetic pulse washed over him, and his body went dark.


	73. Judge, Jury, And Executioner

**4 Hours Ago**

Ground camps didn't have much of a use for holding areas. Infected or otherwise hostile androids were killed, and traitors might meet all sorts of unpleasant fates, but problems were dealt with as immediately as possible. The time, space, and personnel for the jails that humans once used were all precious resources that couldn't be spared. Even if they could; why bother? Rehabilitation was only a reprogramming away, and anywhere could be jail if you turned off an android's motor complex.

For these reasons, I found myself locked in a storage room. No sunlight aside from what came through cracks in the boarded-up windows, only my own internal clock to tell me the time, no contact aside from brief snatches of overheard grumbles from the unfortunate androids who still had to guard the place with me in it, no ability to move, and no idea what was going on.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with the situation.

Being helpless and knowing punishment was coming was a little like being in paradise. If I'd had a dog's tail, it would have wagged like a puppy's when I heard stompy, familiar footsteps and the door clicked open. As it was, I couldn't even smile.

Gamma hauled me to my feet and plugged something into the port at the base of my neck. A few seconds of work on her part and I was able to blink, then work my jaw, then stretch my whole body out.

"I was starting to think you were just going to leave me like that," I said, rubbing at my shoulders. "It's awfully late, too. Am I getting midnight disposal?"

Gamma narrowed her eyes and marched me out into the camp without answering.

The good enforcer didn't like me on principle, but she didn't let that get in the way of following protocol to the letter, even if it meant she seemed to be on my side at times. The whole camp knew I didn't need to be controlled or contained or escorted. In this tooth for a tooth world, I was there offering my jaw—my whole skull if they wanted—to cover all I'd taken. Escape was the furthest thing from my mind. Gamma was the one that managed me because it discouraged the resistance members from doing anything too grisly before the army had finished with me. If they thought they could get away with it, most likely they would've thrown me in the vats to be melted down with the rest of the YoRHa corpses.

I wouldn't have minded. To me, violent mob justice wasn't any less legitimate of a way to die. But the only kind of justice that would be taking my head was the kind bound by bureaucracy. The wait was a little frustrating, but I'd had a long life of dreading the future; I could handle a few days of administrative bullshit in exchange for the privilege of anticipation.

I liked to think Gamma and I were close after our handful of encounters. Since the entire basis of my being there was for me to get punished, she couldn't interrogate me the way she wanted. So we'd meet and she'd spend twenty or thirty minutes asking the same question under four or five disguises, trying to get me to admit things I was already there to confess. I think she wanted there to be more to the story than there was. Even if I'd filled in the bit that Fern was so amped up and trigger happy because V was human, it didn't change what a senseless, almost accidental incident it was. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gamma kept that hard, menacing look about her all the time, but it clearly infringed on her sense of order that two androids died as a matter of cheap happenstance without any involvement on part of machines.

There were many other tells, but the way she struggled with that loudly announced that she had never been on the ground for a meaningful stretch before all this.

When I saw that the cloth over the command tent had been drawn and closed, my pulse began to race. I would have run there by myself without Gamma to hold me back. If things were different, that meant this day wasn't going to go the way the others had. And in my mind, there was only one thing truly different that could happen. No more questions, just my sentencing. My death.

The ominous privacy within the dingy linen was enough to leave me trembling and almost overheated with excitement. But it did dampen my day a little that I was dropped down into a seat across from Theta.

Gamma only ever asked me questions about the murder. Theta, on the other hand, asked about everything else. Especially 'legion'. What the hell could I tell her aside from what I'd seen? Machine heads with no lights moving by themselves made about as much sense as dead YoRHa attacking the camp. I could've told her straight that they were demons from hell, she wasn't going to assume I was being literal. What got on my nerves was that she also asked about V.

At first, I thought it was strange. She'd had every opportunity to question him during the when he'd come into the camp like a spider king to weave his story for all the army ants. But it quickly became apparent that the questions she asked me about V were the kind he would never have answered. What he did, where he went, why he carried a cane, why he had never shown his face to androids before, how 'organic' he was. She even asked about my relationship with him. What started off dry always progressed to a place too personal to be about disproving him as a weapon.

I couldn't figure out what she wanted, but it didn't matter. V was none of her fucking business.

She busily scribbled on a clipboard resting at an angle against the table and flipped to the next page. "I suppose you'll be uncooperative again today."

"Probably." I smiled sweetly. "Does that mean we can skip the formality?"

"I wouldn't be so interested in V if both you and 9S were not so wrapped up in him. 9S has an unfortunate tendency to obsess over anyone he calls a friend, but you lack that personality flaw. I'm curious how V captivated an executioner unit as…unique as you."

"Couldn't say. I wasn't really in my right mind when I met him."

"And now that you are, the effect remains in place."

I shrugged. "He's compelling."

That dead-fish look that seemed to be her resting expression flashed at me. I liked this part. It wasn't going to last long, but it was refreshing to know the answer to Theta's question and constantly hold it out of her reach.

"He's bizarre," she said curtly, thumbing at the next page of her clipboard before setting it aside with a huff. "But I'll grant you that he does evoke a strong air of authority."

"He's a cold-tempered bastard who is obviously used to obedience from the people around him. But that's probably familiar territory for you."

Theta didn't bat a lash. "Strong command structure relies on the presupposition of obedience. Where 9S took him as a friend, your loyalty suggests you've taken him as some kind of superior."

"Hmm." I averted my eyes, peeking shyly at Theta from my periphery. "Maybe I'm just in love with him?"

Theta's face curdled like I'd slapped her with a handful of boar shit. I could barely handle keeping my voice and expression convincingly modulated for that line in the first place, so I dissolved into spitting laughter on the spot. Some of the best I'd had since V re-acquainted me with my identity. Hell, some of the best I'd had in my life.

"What a terrible personality for an executioner…" she muttered.

"It's because I was a really good executioner that my personality is like this." I sat forward, grinning wide enough for both of us. "You wanna know why I won't tell you anything about V, ma'am? It's because you don't _deserve_ to know him."

"I wonder if 9S feels the same about you."

She tapped at a screen beside her, starting up an audiovisual log that must have come from the kid's Pod. I didn't have to look to know what it was. I could hear 9S crying out for V over the gritty howl of wind and sand. My voice telling him to go away. The clang of weapons and the crack of my knee connecting with his small chin.

"The both of you are very possessive of him." She courteously lifted the screen so I could see the glare of red errors and the way 9S' focus had compressed the moment he saw my hand on V's sword. "See there? He was ready to kill you because you touched the sword. And here you swung it at him full force even though you'd been fighting defensively up until that point. There is so much more than meets the eye to this encounter. I can only imagine how your feed of it looked."

I sank back in my seat and crossed my arms. "I'm pretty sure I destroyed my pod sometime last year, so you'll have to live without audiovisual."

She stopped playback with a touch of her finger. "Yes, that is a reality I've come to accept. But you can be useful in other ways."

The words crawled up my back and turned into pressure between my clenched teeth. I knew their implications the way prey knew a predator well before it showed its fangs.

"YoRHa Unit Number 8, Type E." There it was. That cool official tone that should have had my black box racing with the assurance of my impending death. But I wasn't assured of anything anymore. And I grew less so the more Theta spoke. "As the penalty for the destruction of one ground android and one high-value specialty android, in addition to endangering of the armistice, you will be reset to your default manufacture state and formally taken into the ranks of the Army of Humanity."

I stared blankly at Theta without seeing her. My punishment was supposed to be death. Why weren't they going to kill me? They were _supposed_ to kill me, but this shitty world couldn't even give me the punishment I deserved. Instead, it wanted something so much worse. Why would they reset me? I would still be an executioner when it was all done with. Who could they possibly need me to kill?

Someone joined Theta across from me and the increasing roar of my worries subsided only to be overwhelmed by brand new worries.

I remembered her. I remembered her slim face and thick eyebrows. Her rounded silver eyes with their unusually bright optic lights. Her stature and all the physical details of her face were no different, but this was no more her previous self than Fern was me. Her face was colder than the one in my memory.

Maybe she held a grudge. I _had_ killed her, after all.

I sagged in my chair with a weak laugh. "What... the fuck is this?"

"The 'Rho' model is just a template," Theta explained as though it was the most casual thing in the world. "No different from a scanner, battler, or executioner. The same goes for myself, Gamma, Iota, and the rest of Legacy Reclamation."

Rho seemed to look through me. I could see her optic lights flicking through different modes. Gamma had mentioned she had top-of-the-line visual capabilities that had allowed her to 'see' V's sword the way I could feel it. A shudder rolled through me as I imagined her looking at me in spectrums I couldn't even imagine.

"Three weeks is a really shitty turnaround time for a body replacement."

"The time frame is regrettable," Rho agreed coolly. "We can't achieve the same mobility of consciousness that comes with the use of the black box. Additionally, the algorithms responsible for generating our personalities are extremely prone to deviation. Our 'revival' process is too complex to reconstruct behavioral patterns with any meaningful accuracy."

In short, I was now seated with an android that had the same name and face as someone I'd killed, but she was an entirely new person. Despite not knowing the old Rho, I found it hard to look at her. I'd never thought that anything was 'creepy' before, but the sensation was getting very cozy with me now. "Sounds illegal. I'm gonna call you Rho-2."

She cracked a smile. A real one with an actual sense of humor behind it, unlike Theta's. It lightened some of the pressure that had built in my chest, but not by much.

"Rho will oversee your reset and gather data on you in the aftermath," Theta explained, already busily back at work with her clipboard. "I understand you've tried several times in the past to erase your memories. I can assure you it will be done properly this time."

"Well see, that's just it." I leaned forward with a bit too much energy and rammed the table, but neither woman flinched. "I'm not looking to be erased this time. I _killed_ you. I came here to have the same done to me."

Rho tilted her head, her silver eyes betraying no sarcasm or anything but an honest inquiry. "Being erased isn't tangibly different from dying, is it?"

"You don't get it."

"I do not. It's not my intention to be unaccommodating. Please elaborate."

"They're my memories!" Rho's strange sincerity was a thousand times worse than if she was mocking me. '_Elaborate_'? What was there to elaborate on? I was a killer and I deserved to be killed; it wasn't a difficult concept so why did it seem so alien to her? "I don't want some other version of me to exist without them. I came here to get justice for all the people I've killed, and that doesn't mean erasing me so I can just repeat the same song and dance for a new master!"

"You crave destruction because you destroyed others…?" By Rho's face, it looked like I had just described the flight mechanism of an alien mothership in a dead martian language. My emotions that I could barely understand and barely articulate were a novel, unintelligible integer among the data she kept. "You completed the purpose you were designed for. There's no reason to experience any feelings of regret."

It felt wrong when she said it that way, but worse still she said it in such a sensible tone that it filled me with doubt. Like maybe I _was_ being irrational.

"I believe your long tenure may have untethered you from reality," said Theta. "Even compared to us, you're an extremely valuable piece of equipment. Damaging your body when it is in excellent condition and possibly the only functional combat-type YoRHa left would be incredibly wasteful."

I wondered if she knew it wasn't a compliment to be called valuable or equipment. More importantly, I wondered if they knew about the kid and the protocol. I thought all this had something to do with it, but they were talking about me like they wanted to preserve me instead of him. "If you think that, you should really keep a better eye on 9S."

Rho didn't have much of a reaction, but I saw a glint in Theta's eye. A slight tilt of her head as though she was cocking an ear in case I let on any more than that.

"He continues to be our prime consideration," she said, rising to her feet so she could stalk around the table. "You can consider your reset a form on independent research based on observations of him."

"Research…?" A surge that rushed over my shoulders and into my hands as I looked at Rho, and I slipped them down beneath the table to hide the way they clenched until my knuckles stood out like bolts under my skin. "What are you trying to do? What do you want with 9S?"

Theta smiled down at me in her dead, joyless way. "That's classified."

I raised a brow and crossed my arms, leaning back casually in my chair and meeting Theta's eyes with a stubborn jut to my jaw. "Then go ahead and erase me and all the interesting insights into 9S' behavior I could share with you."

Across from us, Rho's eyes glittered with something like greed. She must have been like a scanner—curious to a self-destructive degree. She tapped her fingers in a few complex rhythms atop the table, but Theta was so busy assessing me that she failed to notice her officer's discipline whittling down to nothing.

"How about," I started slowly. "You tell me what my assignment is going to be once you reset me. You're gonna have to tell future me something, so it shouldn't be classified for me to know now, right?"

"You'll be my subordinate," Theta said with a distinct note of amusement. "You'll be assisting with Legacy Reclamation."

"…By executing people?"

"Not primarily."

Oh good, only _occasional_ murder this time around. I could imagine future me finding it an exciting change of pace, and my desire to die tripled out of spite.

"You'll probably only execute machines," Rho offered.

Theta and I both looked at the information officer, me with half-feigned surprise and Theta with a silencing glare. Rho seemed confused as though she'd fully assumed that was a permissible admission that would soothe my resistance to the concept of being recycled as an executioner.

"Woah okay," I said with a laugh. "You raised all this fuss about me endangering the armistice and here you're plotting to kill machines off?"

Rho remained silent. She didn't look particularly apologetic, but she probably wasn't keen on overstepping her boundaries again. Theta sighed. The damage was done and she knew it. I suddenly had a very strong appreciation for the reproducible nature of YoRHa personalities. It must a nightmare be to try and command highly-specialized units who were brand new people every time they died.

"Let me be clear: Our actions and those of the full Army of Humanity are separate matters. Legacy Reclamation's goal remains the same as it has always been: To care for humanity's legacy according to the memories we passed down since the earliest pre-gestalt androids. 98% of the machine population was wiped out when the tower fell, and this is an opportunity we do not intend to squander." She planted a hand one hand on the table and glared down at me with a shine to her eyes that truly made them golden. "Whether they are peaceful or not… Legacy Reclamation cannot and will not allow machines to be the ones who inherit the earth."

I was only half-joking when I'd compared her to V earlier, but she definitely had the intensity. "Ok… I get that. But what's it got to do with 9S?"

Theta stood up straight, adjusted her uniform, and turned her stare on Rho with a barely visible go-ahead.

"I apologize if my earlier statement was unclear," she began. "Our goal isn't to enter a new major conflict with machines. It's to prevent them from colonizing the planet unchecked. Ideally, android kind would begin to develop for its own sake. However, current models of androids have proved extremely susceptible to loss of purpose. Without humanity to push them forward, they'll be quick to cease their own manufacture and fade into obscurity as they began to before the aliens appeared. It was the proposal of the previous Rho to produce a new kind of android that wouldn't have this problem, but there is simply too much variance in the existing personality algorithms to presume it can be done without new research. However, new research is...expensive and time-consuming. It required nearly 6000 years of effort to produce a design evolution as dramatic as the difference between YoRHa and common-model androids, and even you are susceptible to loss of purpose."

"…Except for 9S," I completed, biting my cheek to hide the start of a smile.

Rho didn't seem to notice. "He has proved an extraordinary case. Despite losing literally everything, he continues to cling to life and with the passage of time he shows signs of developing an innate sense of purpose and the ability to self-direct without falling into despair. You too—you erased your own memories and lived under the assumption you were a resistance android in order to circumvent your original purpose and now you are here pursuing 'justice', misguided as it might be. It's useful that you're an executioner, but what we truly want is to isolate that resilience and determination to progress. Tweak your faculties over time until that behavior is reliable and reproducible in a less expensive model. That will be the next generation of androids."

"Which will be…" I gestured faintly at Rho-2's fancy new body. "Templated? Like YoRHa?"

Rho's face scrunched. Her passive curious expression disappeared, and she looked at me like I was lower than dirt. "They'll be _androids_. It defeats the purpose entirely to create androids who carry the hearts of machines."

I nodded as though it made perfect sense, but I had to fold my hands under my nose to hide how hard I was trying not to laugh.

They thought 9S was a miracle case who had picked himself up and just decided to live on his own. Idiots. He was alive because V was human. He had a purpose because V's existence was purpose enough to raise any YoRHa up from the edge of the grave. If he was continuing to do things and make choices now that V might be gone, it was probably because V had unknowingly given him permission to be dissatisfied with his fate, the same as he had to me. Whatever he'd learned while he was with V was too valuable to die with.

_Too valuable to die with...?_

Oh. So _that_ was how it was.

I'd erased myself over and over again, and finally, I had something I was proud of and didn't want to forget about. I'd let myself grow close to someone I would never harm. Just once, I'd protected someone. If there was a place where I could see all those faces I'd called friend, comrade, or lover before I took their lives, it was only worth it to die if I could hold onto that memory as I went and say to them that I did one good thing.

I didn't want the kind of person I was as Fern to disappear. And as 8E… I just didn't want to lose the simple memory of being given a choice.

Well, that simplified things nicely.

I didn't care what these stupid army androids did. If they wanted to study 9S from now until the sun went out looking for something that wasn't there, that was their business. Whether machines or androids inherited this tarnished, oil-stained planet was irrelevant to me.

Before, my goal was just to die in whatever way they saw fit, but now? Hearing my body talked about like I was just renting it made me even more determined to destroy it so thoroughly they would never be able to use me for anything. If these vultures wanted to scavenge me, I was going to make them fucking work for it.

"Those are noble causes I guess. But that doesn't have anything to do with me." I stood and courteously pushed my chair back in. "I promise you if you study me you won't find what you're looking for. 9S… Honestly, you probably won't find it there either, but good luck."

Gamma's heavy hand fell on my shoulder and I could feel her trying to press me back into my seat. "Sit down, Unit 8E."

"No thanks!" I chirped. "My memories are too valuable to give up just because you guys want to play god. So I think I'll just go."

Theta made a disappointed 'don't waste my time' face that V would've closely identified with. "We would like to avoid damaging you. Don't make this difficult."

For knowing I was a combat model they really weren't taking me seriously enough.

Fun thing about YoRHa design: Physical black box stability relied on the same materialization sub-routine that allowed YoRHa to alter the matter state of weapons and items. When there was a delicate piece of equipment with a self-destruct routine in oh-so-extremely valuable android's chassis, rattling or jostling of any kind was unacceptable design. Our bodies were built to absorb shock, and our black box more or less floated with almost gyroscopic stability in a special compartment just beneath our motherboards. Knocking them around was pretty much impossible.

Android fusion reactors were comparatively quite sensitive.

I pulled the chair back out and shattered it against Gamma's chest. She was a rock of a unit, but that made her terrible at absorbing carefully directed blunt force. She stuttered from surprise and from the flicker in her power supply. Beside me, Theta reached for her weapon. I skimmed backward, deeper into Gamma's reach until my hips were nestled against hers, grabbed her by one arm and the back of her neck, and hauled.

I had to give it to her—she was probably at least as dense as a YoRHa unit. The crash as she pulverized the table beneath her mass was obnoxious. A cloud of dust and splinters flew into the air, buying me another few seconds. The noise would have caught the camp's attention and they were bound to shoot me on sight.

If only Theta's voice didn't follow me out through the linens. **"Hold your fire!"**

She was really becoming a pain in my ass.

I ran across the garden and rolled beneath one of the broken-down trucks to get my bearings for a moment. Throwing Gamma was a matter of making use of the expectation that I wasn't hostile. Routine practice really, but typically the surprise attack ended the life of its target. I'd have to get around Gamma if I really wanted to get out of here now. Had I left a weapon in this camp anywhere…?

I shuffled forward until I popped up at the front of the truck. A bunch of boxes that hadn't shifted in months piled against and wall and I gladly ducked behind it to find what I was looking for. Like an idiot, I'd sealed it with a lock that required hacking and here I was with no pod.

The truck was moving. Gamma was physically pulling the damn thing out of the way.

"Fuck it," I grunted, and kicked the mechanism. It gave easily and I took a bit of hacking damage for my trouble, but it wasn't an especially strong defensive system. Bit of chromatic aberration few sparks on my tongue. I'd be fine.

I got my fists into both bracers and whirled with them in time to block a buzzing hit from a glowing tonfa. Theta really was full of surprises.

"Your NFCS is not online." She had a cool tone given her arms were shaking with the effort of pinning me in place. "You can't use those. Stand down."

"NFCS...? Ohhhh, I get it." I bared my teeth in a sharp-edged laugh. "You think I'm the kind of YoRHa who can only do damage if that flashy system is working. Sorry to let you know this now, but killing Lobelia and Rho wasn't that much of a fluke."

It wasn't her fault. Without an operational NFCS, most YoRHa were pretty helpless. A side effect of the heavy specialization. But I was among the executioners tasked specifically with infiltrating resistance camps. And more often than we ever let on, the difference between a very clean or very messy execution was the ability to do things the old-fashioned way.

I could see Theta reconsidering her proximity, but I didn't give her much time to think it through. The Type-4O fists were dangerously bladed. A jab was as good as piecing pierced with a sword. I did not need the boost in force or the showy combat routines. I only needed to connect. She was good with her tonfa, but she was no YoRHa.

Gamma snatched Theta back from my onslaught. She was such a good subordinate; if only she'd broken my shoulder broke the start instead of trying to intimidate me I might not have gotten this far. Ah well. I plunged both fists forward into one of her meaty thighs. To my surprise, she still tried to make a grab for me and I had to fall backward—immobilized or not if she got me in her grip I wasn't going anywhere.

The sensors along my arms prickled and I kicked backward, tearing my bracers from of Gamma's thighs and getting splashed with her oil for it. Rho had fired some kind of EMP weapon at me. She couldn't fire the second round too fast, or she'd have done it already. They were still trying to capture me. Which meant it was a matter of time before someone tried to do to me exactly what I'd done to Gamma, and they had more than enough guns to make it happen. I scrambled back on my feet, hopped across the tops of the parked trucks, and made a run for it.

I had to disappear and _fast_.

I dove right outside the camp. Think, think. The geography was a mess, and my mental maps weren't lining up. Was there anywhere I'd hidden anything else I could use? Had I left things in places as Fern? As Ivy?

My feet pounded all the faster as I heard someone hit the stream behind me and a bullet zipped past me and kicked up a soggy splatter of mud. The crater loomed in front of me. I could leap into the mass of white blocks and try to hunker down, but the routes of escape were way too unpredictable. I ducked into one of the empty, listing buildings on the crater's edge instead. Not to hide but to obscure my trail by disappearing down to a lower floor where I could reach the window of a different half-destroyed building.

I repeated this several times, ascending and descending through the wreckage until I was inside a clogged runoff drain. There was an elevator inside. I had no idea where it went, but I took it. If Rho really could see in all those different spectrums, the last thing I wanted was to be in an enclosed space where she could easily spot me.

The place at the bottom of the elevator was dark. Without any way to generate light, I wasn't keen to go too far, but I stepped out and let myself breathe the still air. Machines were down here. I could hear the distinct _whir-clank_ of their movement in the stillness. If they heard the elevator activate, they didn't care to investigate, and I didn't care to go poking at them.

What a fucking mess this had all turned into. Where was I supposed to go from here? I couldn't kill myself, and Theta hadn't let the resistance androids kill me. I could get 9S to kill me, but frankly, the idea was enough to boil me in my own oil.

If only V were still here...

Dropping flat in the dirt, I closed my eyes and tried to feel for him the way Fern did. I got a vague sense of him being above me, but not much else. And even that might not mean anything. I knew how he lingered on the air for weeks after he'd moved on. Every day the sensation would grow weaker and fainter and eventually a month from now, it would be as though he'd never been there at all.

I combed through my memory for anything, absolutely anything I could use. Maybe if I could get in contact with Pod 042 I could find out for certain if V was still here…?

Again, that meant I had to turn to 9S.

I scratched at my hair and heaved a short, bitter sigh. "God damn it..."

He couldn't have been in the camp, because he'd definitely have come running at the commotion. V wouldn't have let him go with him to fight the gods—it wasn't the kind of fight an android could participate in. So, he had to be around doing his own thing, right?

Maybe at that machine network copy everyone kept talking about?

I picked myself up and looked at the elevator. My NFCS would need a little longer to boot, but the materialization sub-system was still operational. I knew I had to have some of them, I never let myself run out.

Three small, unassuming rods appeared in my hand. The maniac who taught me how to make E-bombs was long dead, but I thanked them anyway. They would buy me some time if I ran into anyone, and I couldn't hide there forever.

At the top of the elevator, I stared out into the pit. I didn't see anything, but that didn't necessarily mean there wasn't someone who didn't see me. I kept to a low on the right side of the pit where I'd be out of sight to anyone searching for me on the left. Nothing happened. For ten minutes. For twenty. For thirty. By the time I got down into the pit, I was constantly looking over my shoulder. I was used to being chased by other YoRHa and they didn't give up half as easy...but maybe Theta didn't want to take on the risk of a hostile E unit. That was bound to only last until she realized I hadn't put in the effort to kill anyone.

I didn't know what I expected, but it wasn't the enormous chunk of memory alloy stretching into the dark. Something that might've been a pod once was sitting on a long block between 9S and two other scanners, keening at a frequency I could only barely hear.

I crept closer, with my hands held up and whispered. "Pod…?"

The gunmetal colored support unit turned. I didn't move and neither did it. The antenna rose, slowly turned, and lowered, and it drifted slowly toward me. "WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

Was it just me, or did it sound like she had an attitude? "Uhh… Can you tell me if V is still around?"

"…NEGATIVE. THIS POD IS NOT REQUIRED TO PROVIDE SUPPORT TO YORHA UNITS OTHER THAN UNIT 9S."

She was definitely angry at me, but I wasn't about to take any shit from a moody Pod. "You also can't attack unless you receive direct orders through the FFCS, while I'm at liberty to do whatever I deem necessary. Right now, I would like to do nothing to him. That can change if I don't get an answer."

Her antennae spun in short jerky motions and she turned away from me. "TSK."

"Did…" I squinted. "Did you just—"

"CONNECTING WITH POD 042," she interrupted. "SUBJECT V'S STATUS IS CURRENTLY UNCLEAR."

"The hell does that mean?"

"UNKNOWN. POD 042 REPORTS HE IS 'PHYSICALLY' PRESENT, BUT NON-RESPONSIVE."

My heart sank and jumped at the same time. I rushed out of the mouth of the tunnel to begin my trek. If I got to V, I could...

I could what, exactly?

My momentum drained before it could even begin to build into anything. V wasn't going to kill me just because I asked. V never did anything for me just because I asked—he barely even let me secure food to keep him alive. My processor must have been in bad shape because the image of a merciful god who would end my life going through my mind bore no resemblance to the real deal.

I glanced once more over my shoulder. At 9S, busy in that strange hacking state.

I could do what I wanted. V would do what he had to. But I didn't want to kill the kid. He wasn't mine to execute and more importantly, the other two scanners were innocent bystanders in all this. I didn't hate 9S enough to take them down with him.

V was shrewd when it came to shedding blood. He'd call my bluff if I tried to hold 9S' life over him. Maybe kick my ass for trying, but it wouldn't be enough for him to kill me.

The Type-4O fists sizzled at my hips.

Within their data was a certain protocol. The one I used to wipe my memory over and over again. Forgetting _wasn't_ like death. Despite having pursued it, it might be something far, far worse. I could make the 9S that knew V, the 9S V had come to care for... disappear entirely.

Theta thought me and 9S were possessive, but she had no idea that V was just the same. I remembered the way he looked at Fern when she didn't leave him and 9S alone fast enough. If I held 9S' memories in my hand and threatened to destroy them, there was no way he wouldn't kill me like an animal. The more I imagined it, the more the gloom of the day seemed to recede. As I wiped at the oil dripping sluggishly down my face, a blissful burning sensation filled my chest. That sun-like warmth I associated with V, only turned up until it threatened to leave nothing of me but ashes.

"Fine," I breathed with a scathing smile. "If I can't get this world to produce justice on its own, I'll make it happen myself."


	74. My Soul to Keep

…

…

…

CONNECTION CONFIRMED. HACKING START.

9S finds himself in an unfamiliar space. It isn't clear how long he's been suspended, but the last thing he remembers is the pulse of electromagnetism and the systems of his body shutting going dark one after the other. His body does not respond to his attempts to reconnect. Nor does Pod respond when he tries to establish communications with her. He must have been right on the edge of a successful hack-in right as he shut down.

_That means this must be… 8E's framework?_

The thought that he's trapped inside of her is enough to set off alarms of panic. Unfamiliar frameworks make him nervous to begin with, and he knows she must be doing something with his body. He tries to calm himself. She wouldn't have used an EMP if she wanted him dead. As soon as his body is back online, he can reconnect to it. Until then, when he's sure his consciousness data has somewhere to go, it's important that he avoid confrontation with any of her anti-hacking systems.

He does want some idea of what is happening, so he heads for her external interface area.

It's strange to not have a body again. So much of his recent hacking has been in the ark where his body is fully articulated. There is an almost claustrophobic quality to being a small, mobile consciousness core safely encased in two defensive barriers and an external response program. Inside, his curiosity abounds. The limits and potential of hacking into another YoRHa unit this way are entirely unexplored. He makes it a task to explore later.

Right now, he needs to figure out what 8E is doing and why she came after him so suddenly. After she delivered her message about V and 2B, they'd had no contact with one another. All he knew where the camp's whispers that she was weird and quiet and weirdly cooperative with her interrogator.

The glide of his diamond-shaped form is noiseless, but he takes care to move slowly along the white pathways and stick to ports that are already open. Normally he would be able to come and go in a system this surface level as he pleased, but 8E is not in maintenance mode and he does not exist in her security protocols as a permissible presence. Treating this like an infiltration mission is the wisest thing he can do under the circumstances.

Move quietly, leave quietly.

He finally reaches her external interface area. There's really no way to interface with it gently or quietly, so after circling it a few times he accepts the risk and glides over the access port for her visual field.

* * *

8E squeezed 9S' body close. Hefting 130kg of dead weight wasn't a problem for her, but carrying it over steep, uneven ground while spitting rain made the lichen patches slick and treacherous required more caution than other terrains. She lifted her head toward something 9S couldn't hear. Thunder, he presumed. It made the most sense since there was nothing else to see. Her visual field centered on the castle in the distance, and then on his unconscious face, draped limply over her shoulder. A puff of steam suggested she must've said something to him, but 9S couldn't hear that either.

She continued onward, up the cliffside path toward the forest kingdom.

* * *

The moment he leaves the access port, 9S is cut off from the outside again. He would like to be able to keep that connection open, but he would probably have to take over her entire interface system. Not the best plan if he doesn't want to make a lot of noise and alert her to his presence. At least if all she's doing is hiking up to the castle, he doesn't need to watch that.

Dropping into the ravine to travel out of sight is a tactically sound plan for someone who wants to evade capture or pursuit. But it eludes 9S why she is carrying him toward the castle to begin with. He may be able to get more immediate answers to his questions if he can approach her memory core.

He opens a port from her external interface to her general storage area. The pathways are cluttered and damaged, likely where she has sloppily erased herself in the past, and he passes piles of old intel left unprocessed, faded unit data, and archival data that can't possibly be relevant anymore. Arriving at a dead end, he carefully opens a hidden port. He can feel it scan for his YoRHa ID, and spins in place, on the alert for any sign of a defense system emerging.

Nothing appears. A gentle _ping_ confirms his access and a new pathway opens, allowing him to descends into her memory area.

He is unsure how much time he has, so he starts with the most recent memories and 9S pieces together the situation as he goes. He has no chest to push a sigh of relief from, but it's no less relief that flows through him when he sees that 8E didn't touch 11S or 4S at all. She had been there long enough—for about twenty minutes, in fact. She must've broken out of the camp pretty soon after they all left.

_"SUBJECT V…UNCLEAR."_

He spins at the sound of his Pod's voice. But it's only a memory. 8E hadn't come up to him intending to do anything to him, it seems. She'd wanted to know where V was—if he was still in their world. The idea to snatch 9S an afterthought that reared its head only after she got her answer.

9S lingers. This memory isn't that important, but he lets it finish.

_"…'PHYSICALLY' PRESENT… NON-RESPONSIVE."_

It sounds exactly like V's last visit to the church last. That disaster only lasted a few hours, but three days have passed since V parted ways with him. 9S can't imagine he had any other stops to make. Had he really been there the entire time? Can he really _still_ be there?

Killing gods can't be a simple task, but rather than the mortal danger, 9S finds himself automatically worrying about how hungry V is going to be.

_Man, spending so much time caring for a human really skewed my sense of priority…_

He continues backward through the flow of time through 8E's eyes, to her memories of the camp. He watches her immobilize Gamma, fend off Theta, retrieve a weapon she must have stored in the camp sometime during her missions there, and emerge from a tent. Whatever caused her to escape had happened within its confines.

Only momentarily does he hesitate to go to the next memory.

It's with a kind of fascinated disgust that he watches the conversation in the tent play out. In unintended synchronicity with 8E, he grows irritated at Theta's questions about V, wells with dread and confusion interlace at her implication that 8E can be useful, and balks at the emergence of the re-manufactured Rho.

_"Legacy Reclamation…will not allow machines ...inherit the earth."_

_So this is why Theta is so interested in getting into my data..._

If anyone had bothered to make all of this plain to him beforehand, his reaction might not be so strong. Maybe he would have called it misguided at best. But finding out like this taints whatever rationality they may have been able to impress on him. Here at the end of 8E's increasingly desperate search for the only punishment that she believed fit her crimes, he sympathizes with her, wholly and unbegrudgingly. He knows what it is to have memories taken away. He understands the instinctive possessiveness of her memories. He wouldn't have given them up either.

The difference between dying with them and having them erased is the difference between dying as yourself or as a stranger, and even the most mundane memory can be an irreplaceable treasure.

However, knowing that she's looking for punishment doesn't bring him closer to understanding why she's taken him. Her E-bombs are enough to knock a Pod offline, but a fully operational YoRHa body like his will be up and running again in just two or three hours even without Pod assistance. According to his internal clock, she's already lost an hour. What is she trying to do?

_Maybe I should go further back?_

Despite the messy and bedraggled state of her general storage, the area closer to her memory core is clearly processing at a pace well within the standard range. There aren't too many memories floating freely around for him to passively observe. But there is one big one.

And it's of V.

Jealousy squirms through 9S, but it subsides fairly quickly as he realizes the one observing V in this memory isn't 8E. The quality of it is too different. Her focus is too different. This must be the sub-identity she took on when she abandoned her memories the last time.

V calls her 'Fern'. They are seated together in a windowsill of the throne room and without any other input, 9S knows that this previous identity genuinely worshipped every moment of V's existence. Android memory is photographic, but she gives such attention to the minute details that it feels like more than a recording. The definition of everything, even down to the background details, the light, and the natural sounds make it feel like 9S could step into that moment if he wanted to. When V begins to talk, she hangs off every lilt and pause and her attentiveness gives his voice life that might otherwise be flattened by the recording process.

More than sympathy, 9S pities Fern. She thought she was a normal android, so she had no resistance at all to YoRHa's base programming. Even as her focus broke down and wandered as his words began to sink in and let her know her own true identity, she clung to that image she'd so carefully recorded of him.

Beyond the end of that memory lies another that looks to take place the same day and also contains V. But the moment he moves toward it, an internal communications channel opens and voice sounds through the open air.

"Get the hell out of my head."

He backs off. All the way off until he's back on her surface UI. So much for stealth and staying off her radar. Since she knows he's in here now, maybe he can talk to her. But he doesn't really have a way to communicate back to her with his current shape. So he goes back to the access port for her visual interface and pushes a primitive message into her field.

_[Body Offline]_

_..._

_[Can't Disconnect] _

"Just my luck…" she mutters.

_[Where Are You Taking Me]_

_..._

_[Why Are You Doing This]_

_..._

_[What Are You Trying To Do]_

"**Stop** doing that or I'll drop your body out the window head-first."

He takes the threat in stride. Technically he's forcing visual distortions so receiving his messages like that that is probably less than pleasant for her.

He swaps back to regular access and again he sees through her eyes.

* * *

8E let his body down easy on the stones. Almost tenderly. Like she didn't want to hurt him at all.

He'd noticed that even in the camp, she hadn't killed anyone. The resistance androids, even the Legacy Reclamation ones, were far from a threat to any YoRHa capable of combat routines, but she was more than that. Her capabilities were tuned for killing other androids, and the way she moved suggested she had a deep well of experience and background knowledge that should have made the task easy.

She backed away from his body and turned to Pod 153.

"Hey." Her voice came crisp through the internal communication protocol. He wondered if she realized. "Send a message to Pod 042 for me."

"THIS POD IS NOT—"

"Heard it before, not interested in repeating myself. Just send him a picture of 9S laying there and tell him…" She hesitated. The room moved lazily around as she paced, her eyes flitting over the cobblestones, tattered remains of rugs, and ever-expanding snarls of roots. "I shouldn't make it too threatening, right?"

"UKNOWN."

"Rhetorical question," 8E grunted distractedly. "Just say: Change of plans; meet me in the throne room. And add my designation."

Oh.

"…MESSAGE DELIVERED."

8E sighed long and slow, but 9S had a hard time telling exactly what emotion it released without being able to see her. She looked out the window as if V would already be there, and wandered away from the dais to take a seat on the stairs.

"I'm not going to hurt you," she said casually. "This is real simple: You're bait. I got my heart set on punishment by death and if it's not going to be by androids, a human will do. But V's not the kind of person who would just do that for me, is he?"

Slowly, a distortion appeared in answer: _[No]_

8E gave a small puff of laughter. "Didn't think so."

Her visual field settled on her lap and she began to scrape idly at oil and debris that had clogged her fingernails. She seemed to have no more to say. This frustrated 9S because it was far too much like V's behavior and he had _dozens_ of things to say.

In her vision, pixels flickered into a glitching message: _[Check your Intel]_

Her vision darkened around the outer perimeter—she was scowling at the continued messaging most likely, but it was the only way he had to alert her to his larger message, which he'd used to overwrite some very nasty things written about him in her unit data logs.

In its place he left her a message that was a little incoherent from his rushing. It told her all about the Ark and how many YoRHa had survived. How he intended to try and get rid of the protocol so they could have a chance to live again. Though he admitted he wasn't really sure if any of them should really get their hopes up, she didn't need to go straight to death as the answer. She might be able to atone in a different way.

Her laughter was as melancholy as Anemone's laugh, but a bit more playful; an honest sound. "That was surprisingly sweet coming from a guy who hates my guts."

He thought about saying he didn't. He had buried his grudge against executioners when he and 2B buried their swords in one another. That lingering resentment had poured out into the ark, and even though she wasn't making a good second impression on him, it wasn't making a return for her.

"Way back, I was jealous of 2B, you know?" She dropped her head into her chin and stared off at the muted light coming in from the entryway. "E models are way more aware of one another than most other YoRHa are of us—helps us keep our distance from each other. The last thing you want is to be undercover and have someone blow it for you by accident. I saw her in the field with you every now and again. Didn't take long to put together than you were her assignment. I thought it must be so much…easier to kill the same person over and over, knowing they could come back a few hours later."

_[And Now?]_

"Stop _doing_ that."

She sat up straight only to lean back on the stairs and cross her arms over her chest. "Don't misunderstand me. I'm not killing you out of respect for 2B. Executioners don't kill the targets of other executioners. I wish you and the rest of YoRHa all the luck in the world with your ark. But all of the people I executed were resistance androids. They won't be coming back. Not one." Her gaze dropped to her foot and she scuffed her heel against the stones. "This might even be the best possible outcome for someone like me. Being killed by a human who despises me is the most damning thing that can happen to me as an android, right?"

9S knew what it was like to want to be destroyed, but he doesn't understand why she is so determined to be damned. He'd been well under the influence of the logic virus before his thoughts were anywhere near that dark, but there she was, calm as could be while saying she wanted V to not just kill her but _despise_ her. And for that, she had taken 9S as a hostage.

As if sensing that he might press the subject, 8E closed her eyes. "I've wanted this for a long, long time. So just mind your own business."

* * *

He manages to do as asked for about five minutes.

Then he's sneaking back into her memory area, into obscure areas from months ago to see where all of this began. The corridors where 8E keeps the memories from being 'Fern' are dark. 9S is like a small candle drifting up to shed light on the shelves of a gloomy library, squinting in search of V's presence among them.

The V in Fern's memory is simultaneously exactly what 9S remembers and nearly alien. The individual acts are almost identical—there isn't much tangible difference between V standing over 9S with the point of his cane grinding on the concrete next to his head and V casually looming over Fern from an upturned bench while maneuvering her face more or less to his whim. But the similarities end in those physical interactions. 9S remembers being kept at a distance by V's cold smiles, but the distance he keeps Fern at is almost antagonistic in its nature. He is on edge with her in a way that he never was with 9S, and the more he sees, the more clearly he is able to see that their relationship lacks the sort of casual permissiveness V showed to him within only a few days' time.

The more he observes Fern, the more he sees a strange reflection of himself in her. The eagerness to please, the inability to meet V's eyes directly. She's more hesitant, and she lacks the undercurrent of rage that 9S was hiding back then. Maybe that's why her devotion is stronger by magnitudes that 9S' ever was.

That's probably what V hates most. It would certainly make sense of that weird maybe-compliment about 9S being irreverent.

9S leans in close to a memory of the two of them in the ravine. He's seen V fight machines plenty of times, but the air around him is totally different when he fights demons. He's mocking and haughty as ever, but he seems to take a cruel delight in demon extermination that he doesn't in machines.

But that's not what catches 9S' attention most.

Red orbs with screaming faces rattle along the streambed. They aren't drawn to Humility because it isn't there. It's V himself they flow to, and his body absorbs them just as readily as the sword did. 9S isn't sure what to make of that, but there's not much time to make anything of it. In the very next memory, V clutches at something on the edge of the frosted pool and Fern's focus shies away. V is saying something but she doesn't hear it.

That doesn't stop her from hearing Griffon's louder, much harder to ignore voice.

_"So now the list of weird shit that's showed up here from our neck of the woods includes the contents of your old lady's jewelry box."_

Old lady is a euphemism. One of the weirder ones considering it could mean either a 'wife' or 'mother' and that seemed like it could cause communication problems. But even though he's talked about Nero, V's never once mentioned a wife. So it must've been his mother's. 9S hadn't given much thought to it aside from the fact that it looked strange. V hadn't mentioned it, but he had never tried to hide it either. And he did wear bracelets think it was another anomaly, just like Humility.

An argument follows between V and Griffon. Something about closing a gate.

V had mentioned being in the ravine for seven days trying to keep demons at bay, and 9S' curiosity spikes as V wades into the pool. He feels the same gut reaction of concern when V cuts his own hand on Fern's sword, but he is not expecting what he sees.

V falls into the water without a splash. In time with Fern, 9S focuses in, wondering how that could be possible. She wades in after him, but he's gone. Only his cane is left. It's impossible, the water is only chest-high at the deepest part of the basin. She yells at Pod 042, but the Pod is just as bewildered, and that turns Fern frantic. Her visuals break down for a moment in a jumble of what 9S knows is guilt and panic flooding from her base protocol. V is gone and she lost him. She lost a human. She thrashes with increasing hysteria through the water, shoving tower fall out of the way and scooping through the mud until she finally finds something that feels like a person

It isn't V. It's 2B.

The distortion in Fern's vision worsens. She throws 2B back into the depths with a scream, and for a moment after she is frozen in place while the falls beat down over her shoulders.

She slowly turns, paddles free of the pool, sits on the bank, and waits.

The image remains static on the pool for several minutes before 9S leaves the memory to figure out when she next saw V. The inconsistencies in what V told him and what actually happened are piling up. 9S is past feeling any real anger at V over his half-explanations of this time period. In the state he was in after fighting demons, 9S knows he would not have had the fortitude to hear something like 'I disappeared into a waterfall for a few days'.

At this point, he is just curious whether there is any truth to the hypothermia story at all.

A stretch of days later, he finally finds more data that includes V. They're out in the desert. V's hair is gray rather than white or black. His tattoos are the same washed-out color, his lips and fingertips are tinged with blue. He is soaking wet and clearly delirious, but even in that disastrous state, he looks at Fern with the glare of a wild animal while she and Pod attempt to convince him that he's going to die if he stays in his wet clothes.

It's almost impressive how much resistance he puts up before Fern manages to strip him and get him to lie down and warm up.

9S notes that although the hypothermia story is real, V's arms are both fine. They remain fine when he recovers, when he specifies that he needs Fern because she can sense magic, when he begins to question her about when she found him, and when he specifies that he was in hell for seven days. It's a wider gap than 9S thought, and he forgives V just a little bit. In the two weeks between the murder and the demon attack, V had literally not been there for half of it, and who knew what he'd done to himself out in the desert. (Probably whatever was _actually_ going on with his arm.)

Without thinking, he rewinds the memory. He doesn't know exactly what he's looking for until he comes on the memory of V sitting in the sand, looking tired but well. He's asking her about the shack, and her answers are fluttery and overly self-conscious.

_"I never actually believed ... that I'd get to protect you."_

She sounds happy, and 9S finds himself wondering just how different Fern and 8E really are.

A bright orange particle zips by him. An attack barrier crops up around her memories, denying him any further access. Again, he finds himself chased out. If only he wasn't untethered from his body, he'd break all those stupid programs. They aren't even especially _good _attack patterns.

"You just can't help yourself can you?" she says, annoyance giving her extra volume. "I told you to mind your damn business."

He's in the middle heading to her visual interface so he can tell her just what he thinks of that when something strange happens. Her systems refocus toward some stimulus he can't make sense of. With no reason to keep a low profile, he opens a diagnostic channel only to find pressure readings coming in from her nerve sensors and an unusual fluctuation in her black box—he's never seen anything like it. It's like her entire body has turned into a barometer or a sensor for some kind of magnetic field. But when he revisits her visual access port, there's no field.

There's only V, standing in the window with Griffon already melding back into stains of ink on his body.

* * *

The rain had begun to fall in earnest. The sluggish, steady kind that rolled in and made itself comfortable, persisting for hours or even days and only answering with vague flashes and moody rumbles of thunder at any thought that it might clear up soon.

V's eyes fell briefly to 9S' body, and when he stepped down from the sill to the dais, his motion was deliberate and predatory. A lot like when V fought demons, only his humor was absent. His stare was calm, but the color of his eyes was almost black from where 8E stood.

"He's alive," she said peaceably. "My sentence wasn't to my liking, so I had a change of heart. I'm allowed to do that right? Change my mind?"

"What sentence did you seek?"

"The only one that matters."

"I'd rather you didn't involve me in your death wish." V spun his cane over his wrist, but it was not the absent spin 9S was used to. There was too much intent; like he was testing it. "If you want to become trash, dispose of yourself on your own."

"If that were possible, do you really think I wouldn't have done it by now?" She climbed the steps to stand at the top. "I'm doing what I have to, V. So do what you must." Her NFCS activated with a whir and a pop of light, and sparking Type-4O fists materialized around her hands. "I keep the protocol to erase a YoRHa's data in these, and I won't be as sloppy with him as I have with myself. Kill me. Or I'll wipe out the person you came all this way for."

V closed the gap between them while 9S floundered. There was no system he could get to fast enough to stop this from happening in just the time it took him to cross the room. He remained pinned to her access port as idea raced through his mind, each one fizzling with the ever-increasing certainty that he was about to see 8E die.

But to both his and 8E's surprise, he took Humility from Pod 042, jammed it into the floor beside 9S' body and stalked past her toward the throne room's antechamber. Half-way there he cocked his head, as if noting the absence of 8E's footsteps in his wake, and turned.

"Have you lost your nerve?"

"Are…" 8E doubled over and laughed in a high cackle. "Are you being dramatic or something? You don't want to kill me in front of 9S?"

"I don't want him in the way," V growled so darkly that it drained her laughter right out of the air. "I'm not a man who can take a life just because it is offered. Come and put it on the line, and I shall _gladly_ pass the judgment that you seek."

8E's vision brightened. The clarity grew sharp and dangerously clear as she followed after V in a trance. Her breaths took an audible shudder, and more than once she glanced down at her hands to find them shaking inside the Type 4O fists. The moment they were both in the antechamber, V raised his cane. 8E lifted her fists almost clumsily, but there was nothing clumsy about V's action. He rarely ever made the opening strike, even at enemies whose abilities he knew was far below his own, but he came at 8E with the ruthless precision of a guillotine.

8E caught his strike. Whatever V had done to himself out in the desert had clearly lent his body some much-needed strength, because 8E's arms actually shook a little with the effort of holding him in place.

Within 8E, 9S felt a shift. The diagnostic channel at his side showed her core program opening like flood gates. But rather than drowning in guilt, some deep place within her memories opened up and allowed the flood through.

Auxilliary vents along her back hissed heat and she pushed V back with a roar. Her eyes moved between the fists on her hands and she de-materialized them in a cloud of sparks. For a fleeting moment, 9S though she was giving up, but that was the last thing on her mind. Just like No. 2, her body was a weapon all by itself. And V was so human, so _fragile_. His body had no reinforcement and though he'd gotten stronger he was still so terribly slow. He had to rely on Shadow to take the brunt of her strikes, while she took his head-on, the cane slicing her down to her plating where it drew sparks and oil but could not penetrate.

The glove covering V's arm began to smoke. A flash of reddish light trailed through V's tattoos and a talon of bright blue electricity swiped at 8E, crushing her into the stone. That must have been the same attack that killed Aconite, but 8E did not go down so easily. With clothing singed and hair smoking, she climbed back to her feet with only a little chromatic aberration to show for the effort.

A rushing sound began to fill her head. She was entering a battle fever state like 9S had never seen before. Doing the same thing he had done by letting destruction and salvation blend together and become the same thing. The pleasure of combat and the crippling shame of raising her fists against a human combined into a frantic and terrifying euphoria that 9S found almost too awful to observe. The punishment she craved was not just death but death at the end of wrath that was almost divine in its intensity.

And V was the only god worth being killed by.

* * *

9S disengages with the diagnostic protocols still running.

8E won't really kill V—if she does it will only leave her right back where she started. But V will kill her for sure, and he can't let this happen. He moves in a frantic circle, willing the fragment of his consciousness to the limits of its thought routine capacity. V isn't one to prolong fights, but 8E is no machine. Even with magic on his side and the new power he boasts, she isn't going to be an easy kill. Assuming he doesn't call down Nightmare on her, this fight is going to take at least a few real-time minutes.

In hacking time, that may be enough to try and gain control of her.

His diamond shape speeds along the white pathways as they degenerate into chaos around him. The ancient, obsolete unit data is shifting and cluttering up places memory shouldn't even be—filling the space with images of androids 9S doesn't recognize.

Her victims, he realizes. They're all her victims. The data is damaged from so many attempts to erase herself, but she still has all these obsolete records that would have been considered junk and cleaned out if she submitted to proper maintenance. But she kept them. Down to the last, always unprocessed and present so that they could never be discretely removed.

So that she would never forget them, even if she forgot herself.

The feeling that forgiveness is beyond her, or any of them. The wish to be killed by someone important. Even the way she is convincing herself that this is what she deserves is too familiar to ignore. He knows all of these things because those were the kinds of regrets that he felt when Virtuous Contract pierced him. Those things, every one of them, were the burdens that Executioners must have been carrying throughout their lives.

But Fern lived as something else for a while. 8E had claimed she was still an executioner even then but 9S does not believe that. Without seeing her face, her posture, or anything. By only hearing her voice, he knows that Fern was truly happy to protect someone who was precious to her, by any means necessary. If 8E didn't have at least some of those feelings, she would not have gone so far to have it be V who killed her.

More than any of this being right or wrong, 9S wants to believe that this cycle can break. That his desires aren't just another silly wish whispered to a world that didn't entertain silly wishes but something real that he can reach if he takes V's word as truth and refuses to accept anything less.

What he needs is control. He's remote-controlled machines before, but controlling the fine-tuned and complex system of a YoRHa is nothing like controlling a machine. He doesn't even know where to begin, there's no precedent for something like this, is there?

It wasn't a query, but his analytical processor produces an answer and he sharply changes direction. The logic virus. The progression of the logic virus invariably ends with the loss of physical control. He's not a program, he doesn't have the same capacity to infect or spread his influence, but there is nothing to stop him from following all the same pathways. He blows through access ports one after the other, taking back doors and alternate paths through places that would otherwise only admit H units. In the distance, a section of her flickers and goes darl. The fight is taking its toll on her body.

He arrives in her main processing core like a bullet, deftly destroying her defensive systems before they can even properly get started up. Normally he would never be so destructive, but he is in uncharted territory and it proves to have been a wise choice.

Her processing system is both complex and extremely aggressive from the moment he tries to subjugate it. He weaves and spins between wild sprays of orange and violet particles and evading a dozen advanced targeting protocols. One of his defensive barriers explodes in a burst of red as he scrapes too close to a firewall. Her sub-processors thwart him even when he finally is able to achieve some level of command. She's too intricate and her consciousness is far too strong to be kicked completely out of her own systems, but he manages to ock up her legs and seize her vocal synthesizer, and with one final swoop through her visual processing core, he regains his view of the outside.

* * *

8E sagged against the wall, her vision tightly focused on her malfunctioning legs. Her breath was ragged but her frustration would not emit as anything more than a weak screech of feedback in her speaker—the most she could do while 9S had control of her synthesizer. Immobilizing her was good, but the ability to speak was the most important thing. He was sure this would end as long as his voice reached V.

As he was completing alterations to her voice, 8E looked up.

The glove had burned away to lavender cinders. Black scales formed intricate patterns in his left forearm and extended up past his shoulder in feather-like shapes that covered half his chest. The pale skin of his face had gone the color of cold ash, suffused by a teal glow. His eyes glowing and ringed with gold around white-hot pupils. A single curved horn had sprouted from his head, looping almost the whole way around it before ending in odd spear-like shapes that resembled solid flame. There was a faint opalescence to it, and violet energy pulsed between its segments. What remained of his tattoos had come away from his body and trailed up over his shoulders in dancing shapes that resembled wings.

This creature spoke no poetry, nor gave any final words of parting at all. It coiled, and it struck.

9S meant to shout. To call out loud and put an end to this. But all he could manage was a tiny, terrified whisper.

"_V…?_"

No power could have stopped the momentum in that strike, but the tattoos flashed over his shoulder and struck his cane off course. It pierced through 8E's shoulder, damaging but far from lethal.

Pain was not a system 9S had connected to, so he felt none. He may not have noticed even if he did. He was caught in the way the scales and horns all receded from V at once in a flurry of violet light, leaving V behind the same as ever. His mouth formed around 9S' name, but he couldn't seem to make himself speak it.

8E's hands grabbed at the cane, her voice struggling to eke out while 9S' focus had lapsed. "Don't interfere…! Don't…take this from me…!" She stretched her arms out, clutching at V's coat. "Please kill… me…!"

V had already released the cane. He knew what he'd heard and peered into 8E's eyes. "9S…?"

His voice brought 9S back to the task at hand, and his voice came out strong from 8E's speaker. "Pod 153, initiate maintenance mode on Unit 8E and re-initialize my body."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

The world went dark to the sound of another scream of static in 8E's speaker, and it seemed only an instant later that 9S awakened safely back in his own body on the damp stone of the throne room. Humility still stood over him.

The familiar, rhythmic tick of V's cane approaching made him sit up, but the sound once so familiar to him now froze him to the spot. His black box thrummed with a heavy, rapid pulse as V stopped just as the bottom of the steps. The transformation had receded, but his forearm remained leathery and scaled at his side.

They watched one another in perfect stillness while thunder shivered over their heads and crept away to the horizon.


	75. Once a Dream Did Weave A Shade

Fighting 8E was not like sparring with 9S. V hadn't expected it to be, but the gap between them was far wider than he anticipated.

His time in the ruins overflowed with stories of 9S in the tower. 9S destroying the machine network. 9S surviving where so many others had not. But he finally began to understand: the battles that had brought the ruins shuddering down on themselves had been, in many ways, attuned to the skills of a scanner who had the ability to engage in combat.

Had it been a more typical war, no doubt the survivors would have looked so much more like 8E.

Her limbs moved faster than any command he could have given, so he abandoned all thoughts of providing Shadow with orders and let her claws and blades flow around him at her discretion to protect him from 8E's onslaught. The executioner didn't seem to care about being struck by V, but she moved with appropriate caution where it came to Griffon and the moment V opened his mouth to command Pod 042, her evasion made her almost impossible to deal with.

When he wound Griffon's power down into his arm and struck, their eyes met. She could have dodged. For her, there was all the time in the world to do so. It was a choice to let those sparking talons collide with her, and he knew before she stirred that she wasn't dead. The difference between YoRHa and android was clear to him then, and the difference between the two of them more so. He was slow, just like 9S had told him so many months ago. The space between thought and action, between attack and reaction was infinitesimal to a YoRHa that had been designed not just for combat, but for killing other YoRHa.

Yet he knew speed was not the determining factor in this battle.

8E was willing to take any strike as long as it came from him. It was what she hoped for. What she demanded through one of the most unpleasant provocations he'd ever been subjected to. He didn't need to be fast in order to kill her, nor did he require any elaborate maneuvers. The moment he could break the alloy beneath her skin, this would end.

What he needed was more power.

The dragon answered him and his tattoos pulled back from his body to make way for dark, leathery scales. An impulse of electricity and neon blue crossed his mind as she tugged Griffon's power closer to her own, and he felt an uncomfortable multiplication of his tongue becoming his _tongues_ behind teeth too sharp to be his. Black talons grew from his right hand, mismatched to the bone-colored claws where the dragon had taken her residence in his left.

8E eyed him up and down and raised her fists with a taunting smile. "Didn't want the kid to see?"

Electricity crept along the feather-like grows rising from his shoulders, and the glove burned and fell away. Being goaded by someone who wanted to die was somehow twice as irritating as being goaded by someone who intended to win.

This time when she came at him and let him strike, he felt the plating beneath her leg crack and yield. His body wasn't less frail, but it was fortified. Not fast, but faster. Closer to what he was accustomed to. Impulses in blue and red strobed through his mind, Griffon and the dragon pouring themselves through him and melding into the violet magic that natural coursed through him. It came so naturally that it was hard to believe this body was actually supporting a devil trigger, but he knew that power for what it was. When 8E's legs sparked and she stumbled back wheezing and attempting to speak for only a static scream to leave her mouth, all he saw was the opportunity to finish the matter. She'd come to die, and he'd come to preserve 9S. They would both get what they wanted.

_"V…?"_

Such a small voice. Barely a whisper over the roar of blood pounding in his ears. But he had come to know that voice too well to mistake it for anything else.

His mind came to a grinding halt while his strike flew on without it, all muscle memory and the prior moment's focus. 8E's expression betrayed nothing. None of the trepidation conveyed by that single word. Was it a trick? Why would she bother if her goal was to be killed? Could he _risk_ it being a trick?

While he stood paralyzed by the unexpected, Shadow surged over his shoulder and altered the course of his strike. The transformation receded and his pale hand slipped from the handle as 8E clasped uselessly for it.

"Don't interfere…! Don't…take this from me…!" Her words seemed to come across a great distance. A sea that she had to fight her way across for every word. Terror came into her eyes then. Desperate and unlike the focused but ill-mannered personality who had the audacity to hold 9S over him in the first place. "Please kill… me…!"

He paid her no mind at all. "…9S?"

A brief pause, and from 8E's speaker, the boy answered. "Pod 153, initiate maintenance mode on Unit 8E and re-initialize my body."

"AFFIRMATIVE."

8E emitted a sharp screeching burst of static that cut off in time with the slump of her body. As quickly as she'd come, Pod 153 turned and floated eagerly up the stairway to the throne room to get back to 9S' side.

V was left alone with nothing to show for having come all this way but a dumbfounded scowl and the beginnings of a headache.

"What… just happened?"

"REPORT," said Pod 042. "UNIT 9S WAS ENGAGED IN HACKING UNIT 8E AND SECURED TEMPORARY CONTROL OF CERTAIN INTERFACE FUNCTIONS."

"He has always detonated his enemies in the past. Why would he only seek control?"

"UNKNOWN. HYPOTHESIS: GIVEN HIS COMMAND TO PLACE HER IN A MAINTENANCE STATE, IT IS LIKELY THAT UNIT 9S' GOAL WAS THE CESSATION OF COMBAT, NOT THE DESTRUCTION OF UNIT 8E."

V wrenched his cane free of her body. It didn't move. She looked just as serene as 2B had, and was equally unidentifiable as being dead or alive.

Pulling his hand through his hair, he followed Pod 153 and stalked the long hall back to 9S.

Saying hello again was even less familiar to V than saying goodbye, and nearly as tainted by hostility as his perception of family. Reuniting with anyone, even his own other half, was the smoke before a violent flame. In the basin, Eva was able to bypass that by her nature and the nature of who she was to him. The force of her temperament would have driven him back into the appropriate position relative to her even if he had resisted it more. Both 'family' and 'reunion' meant things in her presence that they no longer could anywhere else.

But this wasn't the basin.

9S sat still and frozen beside Humility and grew only tenser the closer V came. He gave no greeting nor any reception at all save his wide eyes and complete silence. Troubling, to say the least. When 9S had no questions to ask, that was never a good sign. It had only been a few days since they last spoke, but the air grew thick. There was no triumph here. No gratitude or relief that 9S' memories had been preserved. It seemed to V they didn't know each other that well in this moment, and the friction of two strangers who were not sure the other could be trusted vibrated on the air. Standing at the bottom step while 9S sat at the top was like standing at the threshold of a familiar house where it was no longer certain he was welcome.

"Are you unharmed?"

9S jolted and jumped to his feet. "No. I mean yes—I'm fine. 8E didn't do anything to me. Minor EMP damage just to knock me out."

"She was intending to erase your memories. All of them."

His fingers tugged and curled around one another. A small gesture, but enough that the full weight of all 9S could have lost pressed down on the already heavy atmosphere. "I know."

The furrow in V's brow deepened. So 9S had witnessed that part as well. He must have been in there the whole time, and to V that begged only one question of any importance. "If I struck a lethal blow, would you have died?"

"I don't know. It doesn't happen like that when I subjugate machines because I still have my own body to return to, but because of the EMP, it wasn't available for me to go back to. I tried; the connection was gone. It's possible I might have lost any memories accumulated while outside my body." His head fell as his mouth went on mechanically without him, but it lacked the vitality of 9S' usual technical chatter. "Theoretically, if I were to completely embed my consciousness over the UI of another YoRHa unit, I suppose their death might cause my entire sense of self to destruct and since there's no ambient machine network or bunker server signal anymore I wouldn't be able to regenerate back in my own body… But it's fine. I didn't go that far, I didn't want to take control of her consciousness, I just captured some of her motor control and her vocal synthesizer."

"And her sight," V added.

9S' eyes flicked to V's arm. "Yeah…"

Thunder lurched by and V looked to the window where he'd come in hardly fifteen minutes ago, wondering how the tides had turned so harshly in so little time.

9S wouldn't be the first to respond with fear and revulsion to his power. It was a reaction common to most humans, and one he was well acquainted with. True, he had responded with more awe than anything to V's familiars but seeing the more demonic aspect come out of V himself could not be the same matter. In an instant not meant for his eyes, he'd found a devil beneath the mask of the one he was supposed to understand as a god.

And for what exactly? V hadn't saved 9S' life, because 8E had never planned to kill him. 9S had made it very clear his memories were perhaps a step more valuable than just continuing to exist, but V could not convince himself he'd saved those either. The situation was never truly out of 9S' control. He could have saved himself, and this could have been avoided.

A current of agitation made V drum his fingers along his cane. Thinking of how he'd have preferred this to go had no meaning. What was done was done and all he had left was what needed to be done from now on. The kingdom of night was on the other side of the world, and he could probably go there alone by one means or another. His plan three days ago was to settle his debts with 9S and leave quietly. There was no reason for that to be different now.

Only he owed 9S one last thing. Not as a matter of obligation or some weak attempt to smooth over what had just occurred, but as a matter of his word.

Taking each step slowly, he climbed to the top and took hold of Nelo's sword. Without a word and while making sure to use his unmarred right hand, he leaned it toward 9S. The boy looked between him and the hilt, his fingers twitching without making a move.

"Go ahead," V said gently.

A thin golden circle appeared, and the sword shifted closer to 9S' hands. His eyes unfocused, his mouth moving around small, whispered words.

"_My only treasure_," his voice hitched with recognition, and again he glanced up at V. "_My divine hate…_ _Wears our mother's red. To a silver blade, I lose... this foolish life_."

His recitation was clumsy. Factual and un-poetic. And somehow it made them so much worse. "There is far too much to tell you everything. But as I promised, I will tell you all that you wish to know."

"Uh…okay... Can we start with what this means? I sort of get the start, that's about your mother and the fire. And then you were wandering around with a weapon defending yourself from…your father's enemies. Which must have been demons. The three eyes of red must be whatever you thought the symbol at the church was… But I don't get the rest or why any of this is even on here. Who is the Black Angel and why does his weapon have your memories?"

V gave a small, tight tic of a smile and meandered toward the empty metal crib. "The Black Angel was properly known as Nelo Angelo. It wasn't a demon. Not really. It was a prison, in the form of a suit of demonic armor. I was the prisoner. _I_ was Nelo Angelo."

Behind him, there was the heavy, tolling clang of the sword hitting the floor. V didn't bother to look over his shoulder. He knew 9S well enough to know he was reconciling that new knowledge with the turns V's mood had taken during that wretched period in December when it had first appeared. And most likely re-playing all that had followed—the fire, the way it attracted demons, everything.

"It was my own fault," he offered, thumbing his cane absently. "Believing that I could live up to my father's legacy, I opened one of the greatest gates to hell in order to gain what I viewed as my birthright. Dante, my brother, defeated me there. And I fell, alone, into hell. To meet the demon prince whose servants razed my home and sent demons to hunt me all my life after. I challenged him and lost, and for it, I was sealed in the armor, without ego or memory."

"Until your brother appeared," 9S murmured. "In your mother's red, with a silver blade…"

The rain pattered busily on the stones. There was little more about that period of his life that V was willing to volunteer aloud. The torture that preceded his time in the armor. Watching the Yamato be shattered before his eyes. He'd call his younger self misguided in his focus, to have been so absorbed in becoming like his father than he undid his works.

"Are you…a ghost or something?" That was enough to draw V's attention. 9S looked genuinely puzzled and gestured defensively at the sword. "What? It said you lost your life."

V laughed tiredly through his nose and waved his cane dismissively. "When Dante destroyed Nelo Angelo, I was released, and that weapon was lost. That is merely where those memories end. In truth, I survived to wander hell in a truly pathetic state for…" He hesitated. Time was strange in hell. It hadn't felt like a decade but it seemed to have been no less than that in the human world. "I don't know how long it was. But eventually, I found my way back and found the sword left to me by my father. In my absence, it had found its way into my son's hands. More specifically…" He held up his left arm and flexed the claws. "Into his arm."

"And that's why you took his whole arm off? Couldn't you have just asked for it?" V looked back at him with a flat and cynical stare. "Yeah, yeah, okay, dumb question. So is your family… are you all…" 9S frowned and abandoned his charming effort to ease into the subject. "What _are_ you?"

And there it was. The question whose answer had eluded V despite nearly a full, uninterrupted year to think about it. He had gone back and forth on the answer so frequently that he could no longer be shocked by all that had happened to him. Human enough for the gods, demon enough to reach the soul of a woman and a dead dragon, and maybe something else entirely to have reached the basin as a still-living being.

"I don't know," he confessed, suddenly sagging under his own exhaustion.

"Well…" 9S tried again. "Are you a demon?"

"'I' am not. But the man I used to be, the man I am part of—Vergil… He is a half-demon. So is Dante. Nero, a quarter. We all share the blood of my father, the Legendary Dark Knight, Sparda. A demon of unparalleled power, who turned on his own kind in order to protect humanity. Vergil spent most of his life pursuing his demonic heritage at cost to his humanity. Eventually, he lost sight of the reason he wanted that power, and this led him to commit multiple sins. Among them, my own birth. It is the nature of a solitary man that he cannot live with anyone but himself, but even that was an unbearable intrusion for Vergil. He cut away everything he believed made him weak. Including his humanity."

_The heart is a tumor of weakness. I shall rid you of it._ Those were the words Mundus spoke to him as he took away what little Vergil still cherished, right down to his identity as a son of Sparda. Where Mundus had been satisfied to seal that humanity, Vergil, ever refusing to be outdone, excised it entirely. So blindly seeking power that he inflicted on himself the exact same cruelty that his enemy had.

V rubbed at his eyes and let his arms drop wearily to his sides. "I'm neither a demon, not truly human. Not half anything, or quarter anything, just…an effigy. A half-demon's bad dreams of being human. Cast out and given form. The less magic I have, the less flesh and blood I am."

"Which means…" A long, pregnant pause trailed those words. When 9S finished them, it was with a horrified whisper. "You were supposed to die."

"That was the idea, yes. Nero was the one who helped me return to where I belonged. Without knowing anything. Without _either_ of us knowing anything. I did not know he was mine until I was Vergil again." He frowned. "It has been a concern of mine whether or not my presence means that was undone somehow."

Standing straight, he turned and planted his cane firmly. It was a sordid tale to tell anyone, much less someone like 9S, but it was done. The truth was revealed, and he felt he'd kept to his word adequately enough to ask the final, obligatory question.

"Now you know. What will you do?"

9S snapped out of whatever calculative trance he'd entered to process this whole story and raised his head from where he'd propped it on his fist. His eyes met V's easily, almost carelessly. "Should I call you Vergil from now on?"

V's face congealed into a grimace. It wasn't an unfair question, yet the thought was enough to make his jaw stiffen and his fist tighten around his cane. The overlap was a blurred line indeed, but after so much time to live as himself, little galled him more than taking the name of the fool who had thrown him out. For as long as he walked in this feeble body with nightmares carved on its skin, he was V.

"At your own peril," he grumbled coldly.

"Right, I guess not. Wait…" 9S eyes widened and he raised a flabbergasted finger to point at him. "Holy shit, you actually weren't kidding when you told Theta you turn to dust when you run out of power, were you?"

"No…? 9S, you are dodging my question. Now that you understand your complicated feelings toward my humanity are misplaced, you don't owe me any loyalty. There is nothing that binds you to me."

"'Nothing that binds you to me'…?" 9S face slackened, then went tight in time with the climb of his shoulders toward his ears. "Oh my god, V, you're such a…such a dramatic _baby._"

Even the thunder didn't dare add its commentary to that, and it seemed even the rain let up as he stared incredulously at the android across the dais. That was a level of insult V hadn't been exposed to since he was a child. "I beg your _pardon_?"

"Keep on begging," 9S spat hotly. "I knew for certain you weren't human three days ago. **You** forget the things you say over time. I don't. The moment you started to be honest with me, I remembered where the inconsistencies were. You told me Nero was a grown man, but you also specified to me the day we buried Devola and Popola that you were 28. I may not know about human reproduction, but you guys don't start _that_ young. I've had my suspicions since the fire, but really there's just too much about your being here that was farfetched from the start. I'll give you credit, though I swore you were going to tell me you were a gestalt or something. I guess that's not that far from the truth though, is it?"

"I…" This was not the answer he had been counting on, and he felt strangely backed into a corner. 9S was angry, but not the way he'd expected. He seemed almost… _insulted_. "I can't help but feel you are missing the point of all this."

9S crossed his arms, his eyes the color of cold steel and brightened by fury. "Then spell it out for me."

V gripped his cane. Being commanded added an unpleasant aftertaste to what he considered an act of politeness. "There is no reason I should presume your continued assistance given my nature is far more complex and less human than you were led to believe."

"Than you _led me_ to believe," 9S corrected with a raise of his chin.

There was a time V might have said it was foolish of 9S to be led along so easily if he harbored so much suspicion, but that was hardly the road he wanted to go down. Even if 9S was starting to tug his more confrontational nature to the foreground.

Before V could decide how to proceed, 9S' gave a long sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the weeks and finally drop it all at their feet. "No amount of programming could make me go through the ordeal that these past few weeks have been just for 'a human'. Especially not for one as weird and spoiled and annoying as you."

The words were both a scathing indictment and inappropriately light-hearted. Was this another of those unpredictable emotional progressions 9S had? First saying that he hated 2B when he so clearly loved her, and now…whatever this was.

"For being such a precise guy, you really are… clumsy." 9S' brows were still drawn, but he looked at V with a sort of agitated pity. "You went through all this stupid convoluted trouble to protect me from you and this is all it was... You really thought I'd throw you away that easy, didn't you?"

Ah.

There 9S went again, choosing to be stupidly, recklessly, unrelentingly kind.

With it right in his face, V realized that he'd been estranged from humanity far too long to assume things like forgiveness or kindness from anyone. He cared about them on some level, but when it came to deception and betrayal, they didn't even register to him as possible answers. Not even for 9S, who was kind enough to forgive his own murderer. To V, being forgiven so simply was as unrealistic as his own presence in these ruins. It wasn't personal; V just didn't have that kind of faith. In anything.

After a life without, that level of mercy was beyond what he could plan on, much less hope for.

"It wouldn't have surprised me," he said, and chose to believe that 9S understood what he meant because he didn't think he could convey it in more or fewer words.

"It's not like you to be so insecure," 9S taunted. "I didn't call you family just because you're human. It's because you act like a huge show-off even though you don't need to impress me at all. And you complain about the food I bring, but you always eat it all. And every time I'm even the slightest bit in trouble, you go out of your way to ensure I won't get hurt. Even if you won't admit it." His smile was small and a little cheeky and infinitely welcoming, as though it understood perfectly well (perhaps a little _too_ well) why V hadn't taken all this for granted but aimed to convince him that he could. "And even though you're actually pretty bad at it."

V was entirely at a loss. His eyes narrowed, not out of any anger, but more a mortified confusion that an android might be more human than him. "Even more than Nero, you've always reminded of myself, 9S. But when you say things like that I fail to understand how I could have come to that conclusion."

"Well, you're not really all that different from me, are you? You're not exactly human, and not really a demon. Just like I'm not really...either of the things I'm made of either. _You would do well to embrace all that your existence entails. _That was what you told me when I was worried about what I was."

"Hardly comparable. I'm the dredges of a man who only ever thought of his humanity as a burden and a sickness that weakened him. I share his memories. His sins."

"Yeah. You do. But that doesn't mean you're not a different person now."

"You sound so… sure."

"I'm on my 48th life, so yeah, I think I get to call myself the authority between us. I got a lot of those memories back, and I made dozens of different choices when I found out about 2B. Hacking, teaching myself to fight, killing myself instead. I even made her promise to continue killing me after she asked me to destroy her. I did all those different things even though I was technically the same person the whole time. As far as I'm concerned you being half of another person that means you're a whole somebody else."

V really couldn't argue against logic like that. Not with any hope of victory. "An android would think so."

"And android _does_ think so," 9S said proudly. "It doesn't matter to me you're not human or a half-human or some kind of magic construct. I think it's cool. Maybe even better than you being only human."

"That seems an especially sacrilegious thing for an android to say."

9S' smile widened to a mischievous grin. "You're the one who always says I'm not very reverent."

"So I do." V managed a smirk in kind and tossed his cane over his shoulder. "It's a quality I've missed."

The minor concession caught 9S off guard. He beamed with one of those brilliant smiles that let V know everything was as alright as it seemed. Nothing of what he so uselessly valued in 9S had been lost. "Did you just say you missed me?"

"I said I've missed your irreverence," V answered curtly. "Perhaps your ears need maintenance."

"Maybe," 9S laughed. He took his first steps toward V and pointed at his arm. "You mind if I see it?"

"Did you not get a good enough look?"

"No, I mean can I get a closer look at it? Like last time."

_Last time…?_ It took V's mind a swath of seconds to puzzle out what 9S meant. The offer to examine his hand. From the day they'd met. Android recall really was a force to be taken seriously if he remembered such a small event. It had lasted barely a minute, and only so he would believe that V was human and cease being so antsy.

Letting 9S examine this knock-off devil arm was another matter entirely. To have it examined so closely by anyone, much less someone with the capabilities that scanners boasted—

He swayed as Shadow materialized against his leg with a deep, rumbling purr. She seeped beneath his feet and dragged him easily across the stones until he was face to face with 9S. Though V shot her a look that promised he wouldn't be forgetting this, she took his betrayed glare with a blithe wag of her tail.

9S snickered and craned his body to the side to get a better look. "You don't have to, you know?"

In much the same way he did not 'have to' endure that silly game of 20 questions, he was sure. "Just do it."

It was a strangely less clinical affair than before. 9S wasn't looking for the ways in which he wasn't an android, he was just…looking. His fingers brushed the lines of the pact mark and traced the leylines of red-violet light seeping from between the ridges. The dragon had been on the quiet side since they killed Zero, but an easy, comfortable warmth began to seep from his forearm. An image of Dante trailed through his mind. Not the one who had existed as _family_—a constant adversary who refused to be defeated despite every pain. It was the image of his twin in hell as the chopped the qliphoth down at its roots. Fighting with Dante and beside him as the mood took them. A memory of someone who was his match and could be relied on.

Perhaps that was why, for just a moment, he allowed the distance between them to dissolve. Allowed both the absurdness of 9S' capacity for compassion to envelop him and the physical touch to seep in. A low breath escaped him, and his body drooped with ease, his rigidly extended fingers relaxing into half-curls.

"I got this arm after finding the bones of the red dragon," he explained quietly. "In the desert that day, far below ground in the place they made Emil. I have to go to the kingdom of night and find the rest of her body. The gods are gone, and that is my only path home now."

"That's fine. I'm pretty sure I need to get to the moon server."

The furrow returned to V's brow with a vengeance. "The _what_?"

"…The server on the moon? I've been thinking about it and the pods are too simple for me to hack into. Even if I could, their network is top secret. I'd probably get attacked by the entire thing if I tried to back my way in—and I'd probably destroy either 153 or 042 in the process. The only place left that could possibly be keeping the pod network connected on a global scale is the moon server, so if there's any place I could dismantle the protocol from, it's there."

"You do know I can't follow you to the moon."

"Yes, V, I _am_ aware that humans need oxygen and you can't come with me to the moon. But I can at least head west with you. They're not exactly doing any orbital shipments out here. For all the excitement we've had around here, this is actually kind of a backwoods area as far as global affairs go. Do you know where in the night kingdom you need to go?"

"…No. Only that 'dragon' weapons were developed there sometime around 6200, and that has something to do with our red dragon."

9S eyes lit up with the exhilaration of discovering wholly new information. "I've never heard of that! How'd you find that out?"

"An android by the name of Accord."

"Accord…? The…" 9S' head tilted. "The old-world weapons dealer? You actually met her?"

"She made it her business that I should meet her. She knew about the gods, as well as exactly what I was. I gather she'd like me gone before I deal some manner of damage to the fabric of this dimension, but all she could share was that hint about the development of dragon weapons by the Army of Humanity."

"Huh… I'll see what I can dig up on that. I wonder why I've never even heard of them being in action…"

9S released his hold on V's claws and crossed his arms. His mind was no doubt already a thousand miles gone into the subject and its possibilities. Likewise, V turned to the windows and looked out at the forest. After so long, there was a certain unreality to the idea of leaving the ruins. But it seemed both their goals lay far outside of it.

V's on the other side of the world, and 9S' out in space.

"What do you intend to do with 8E?" V asked casually.

9S froze as if he was the one who had been caught in an incriminating form. "O-oh. Well… I really didn't have a plan when I was trying to stop you, I just didn't want you to kill her. But now… Look, I'll tell you, but you have to trust me alright?"

V frowned. He didn't like the sound of that at all.

* * *

**A/N: SO HOW ABOUT THAT NIER REPLICANT REMASTER ANNOUNCEMENT AND NIER RE[IN]CARNATION?**


	76. Northwest of Normandy

It wasn't that I didn't expect to wake up; I'd heard 9S put me in maintenance mode. I just didn't expect him to still be there, crouched next to me with his readouts all opened so he could personally make sure I was operational.

V was still there too. Perched on a root and spinning his cane with his left hand with slow deliberation and a tight scowl. Good to know he was as unhappy about me being alive as I was.

Sitting up, I immediately hissed through my teeth. The battle fever was gone and the damage to my body had cozied up to my pain receptors. All my lacerations had been cleaned and patched with staunching gel, but it had no numbing properties. The most it was doing for the open puncture in my shoulder was keeping the extra agitation of flowing air out of the wound.

"Whoa, take it easy."

9S' voice was like a rude alarm buzzing me further into the unfortunate reality that I wasn't dead and it was his fault. 'Take it easy' was already a stupid thing to say to somebody who had abducted him, but for him to say it when he was the one who was responsible for my current state made my fists quake. I'd have punched him on principle if I wasn't relying on my good arm to stay upright. "I didn't ask for you to save me. I told you to mind your fucking business."

"I'm a scanner," he said matter-of-factly.

My head fell back and glared at the ceiling as I vented a sigh through my nose. Arguing that point was a dead end. 'Nosy asshole' was probably in the scanner base code, and the machine research report was more than enough evidence that 9S could be self-destructively beholden to his design imperatives. "That doesn't mean you had to interfere. It was _my_ choice to make."

"I know." He dropped down and properly sat on his knees so he could look me in the eyes. "I'm sorry."

9S had the rare talent of speaking kindly in the wrong tone. He was trying to comfort me, but all I heard was that he knew I'd lost, that he knew he had control of this situation because he knew he had taken it from me. And he was sorry, he really was. It was in his voice. All over his face. V had said the same freeing words to him, and he had made his own choice in the full knowledge that it meant getting in the way of mine. Tears gathered in my eyes, but I scrunched up my face and blinked them away. Frustration was a pale word for the iron-heavy coldness that dragged my black box toward my navel the longer I looked at him.

I hated him more than ever, but he didn't have any hard feelings toward me. That wasn't why he was doing this.

"If you're so damn sorry, let V finish the job."

He didn't smile, because that would've been patronizing at this point, but his expression softened. "That's up to him. I won't get in the way a second time if you really insist, but… Will you hear me out at least?"

"For what?!" I lurched forward and dug my fingers into his lapels, hauling him toward me. "Do you not get it or something?! I killed everyone I ever cared about, and it was all for fucking _nothing._ No amount of preaching from you is going to change that, or the nature of what I am as an executioner. There is nothing here to save. Nothing _worth_ saving. I deserve to die. It's the only kind of justice that will make all this any kind of right and that's the bottom fucking line."

On his hands and knees, staring at his reflection in my eyes, he was the most helpless creature I had ever seen. Yet he didn't make any attempt to extract himself or restrain me. Instead, he pulled his legs in closer, so he could continue to sit with me.

"I don't intend to come off preachy," he said gently. "And I don't want to act like I know you just because I saw your memories. I don't know you. I only know what you're saying, and I'm only comparing it to what I've seen. You intentionally avoided killing anyone in the camp even though it should have been easy for you. And you left 4S and 11S alone even though I'm sure you knew I would have defended them."

"They didn't do anything to deserve this. I want to die, not just casually go around killing other androids just because I'm an executioner."

"In other words, you chose not to." My grip on his coat tightened, but he sat there without resistance, rubbing his fingers at the edges of his shorts. "I think you and 2B probably have similar ways of thinking beneath the differences in your circumstances. The camp was good for you because people like Cypress would have been there. Then you went straight for me, because you knew it would make V mad. You want to die hated and cursed because that was the only way it felt like you could atone, right? That's the kind of justice you want to get for the ones you executed?"

"So, you _do_ get it." I shoved him away and leaned back on my good arm with an annoyed snarl. "Are you done then? Satisfied you said your last words and tried to do the right thing?"

"I just wanted to know so I could ask you properly..." He righted himself and smoothed his coat down. "Are you willing to try a different kind of atonement?"

"There _is_ no other kind, 9S. Not for me."

"There's V."

The words rattled around in my and tumbled down into my black box like a rain of small, stray gears that had been shocked loose. I shook my head and blinked to re-orient myself. "V has _you_; he doesn't need me. I'm a criminal remember?"

"Here, yes." 9S glanced over at V. A wave of the cane left the matter to him, not as permission but an extension of tacit trust that made my stomach clench with envy. "We're leaving the ruins. And we want you to come with us."

I stared at him and lurched until I was fully upright, cradling my arm and trying to ignore out the sizzling in my shoulder. My mouth opened for a handful of false starts before I switched targets to V. "Are you included in that 'we'?"

"Under duress." A hint of dimple appeared in his cheek. "He made a rather compelling case for you."

"You…" My face was slack as I turned back to the kid. "You did?"

"I'm a scanner..." he repeated, more self-effacingly than last time. "I saw everything about why Theta's interested in me. I can fight, but I'm not a combat model. You are. It might even be for the best that you're an infiltration-type executioner."

Steam began to vent from beneath my clothes. I closed my eyes and savored a moment alone with nothing but the sound of the persistent rain and the unreality of what was being offered to me. Penance, punishment, and destruction were all synonyms to me at this point. Living to atone was as alien as…well, the aliens. If anything other than V had been on the table, I wouldn't have been able to parse why 9S thought I would accept this.

"So you need me to kill androids?"

"No. I need you to protect V."

I wasn't stupid enough to be swept away in thinking that meant I would never end up killing androids at all, but what a world of difference that phrasing made.

"Alright…" I said slowly. "I'll hear you out."

The kid took a lot of unnecessary twists and turns when he talked. Either he was overstimulated by the fact that I was bothering to entertain him or being a scanner didn't actually account for any ability to concisely convey the data he stuck his nose into. But the story unfolded into a sensible order the longer he went on.

As my eyes wandered aside to V, a picture began to form in my head.

His plan with the gods had obviously fallen through. He needed to get to the kingdom of night and search for the rest of his dragon. There were two ways to do that: Go east or go west. East was the more immediately viable option, given the close-at-hand coastline. 9S was on good enough terms with Anemone to make a passage request that she probably wouldn't scrutinize too closely.

Theta complicated that option.

The Army didn't mind what 9S did in the ruins. Even when he went outside the common zones, there was no cause for concern because they were on an island. There was nowhere he could go. Knowing Theta wanted his data for Legacy Reclamation, it was safe to assume that she would become a problem if she caught wind that he was leaving the sector entirely. 9S didn't have to tell anyone he intended to go to the moon, but if they knew any part of his course, there was a high chance he would be followed or find his way forward blocked. Never mind that whoever was responsible for the YoRHa plan was still out there in orbit. If he made a request with Anemone, Theta would know and she would report it to Legacy Reclamation, and that report would reach the one(s) who considered 9S a loose end.

On a more down-on-Earth level, Theta had to be kept in the dark because of V. His lie did a stellar job at accomplishing his goals, but it was told under the assumption he might not come back from the woods. Under the new circumstances 9S was outlining, it made a huge problem of Theta. She was never going to sit still and allow what she believed to be an active anti-legion weapon to slip through her fingers. The moment she put together that V and 9S were both gone, she'd be after them. They were the two most valuable existences on Earth to Legacy Reclamation's goals.

West it was.

According to 9S, there were lots of ways to go that way that an android could manage by themselves if they had the appropriate materials. They could disappear down to the southern coast and be across the sea to the mainland before anyone caught wind of they were gone or figured out they weren't coming back. From there they could make their way across Asia and Europe to find a way to the Night Kingdom from the far west coast.

The story suddenly stopped. 9S was watching my face expectantly, and I felt my temperature rise. "Is that it? Does your entire plan just boil down to 'go west'?"

"I'm still figuring out the rest," said 9S. "We're missing a lot of data. I'm going to head back to the ark to ask the operators for some help with our course and how best to get to the moon, but—"

I interrupted him with a chest-deep groan and rubbed my hand over my face. "Are you going to _tell_ the operators you're traveling with a human?"

"I don't think that would be a good idea. News travels and it would put 4S and 11S at risk."

"Good, your processors aren't completely full of shit. What kind of route do you think the operators will suggest? We're _androids_. V isn't. Are you really considering what it means to try and march him all the way across the continent?"

"I am no stranger to harsh travel," said V. "And my body is no longer quite so weak as you remember it."

The dozen aches and blinking error messages let me know that just fine. "There's more to it than just the locomotive aspect."

9S sat up straight, suddenly every inch the attention student. "Your expertise would be really invaluable to us. I got a lot of memories of my old lives back, but I'm still a scanner. I spent most of my time alone deep in machine territory or up on the Bunker. I don't really know what it's like on the ground outside this sector."

It occurred to me that when he said it was for the best that I was an infiltrator type, this is what he was referring to. Most YoRHa were sheltered, in a way. A life of fighting, dying, and rising to fight again with only occasional contact with non-YoRHa ground forces did not make for especially savvy androids.

"There are a lot of unknowns," 9S said eagerly. "V doesn't know where in the night kingdom he needs to go, and my only lead is to go somewhere they're still doing material shipments to the orbital bases and try to sneak on. I was hoping we could use your expertise. I have a feeling we'll have to gather information the old-fashioned way once we're away from here."

I scooted myself back against a nearby root and tried to relax. "There probably aren't a lot of materials being shipped these days. Android manufacture has been halted in a lot of places. The only place I know of where they might still be reliably launching supplies is out past Normandy."

"The H sectors?"

"You ever been?" He shook his head and I was not surprised. A high-end model like him would have no business in that area. "I don't know anything about dragons, but I'm sure there's plenty of night kingdom gossip in the scavenger cities out that way."

"Scavenger cities?" asked V.

"Secured locations with low machine presence," I clarified. "Large groups of androids intermittently use them as bases of operation for material hunts, or as hubs for supply collection. The ones past Normandy are pretty refined as I remember. And if you're trying to cross the ocean, you'll have to go that way anyway…"

9S leaned close to me with an excitable expression of eagerness that made me want to push him again. "You're full of useful info, 8E. Come with us. We need you. Especially if I really do get to the moon, I can't leave V alone out there."

My legs started to jitter and the unpleasant vibrations the motion caused in my damaged plates only made me angrier. "I don't really have a choice."

Low blow, but it was worth the wounded face he made. "You do. You can say no."

"I sure can, and then you will run off west and get V killed." Despite the stabbing pain it caused, I crossed my arms. "The optimal operational temperature of an android is forty degrees Celsius. You know what that is for a human?" His mouth slackened with surprise but no words came out. "It's death. He'd cook in his own skin. The lowest temperature we can tolerate before we have to take steps to regulate is 10 degrees Celsius. The floor before we can't regulate enough to keep our filtration system from freezing is about negative ten Celsius. What happens to V at that temperature?"

"Hypothermia?"

V made a face on the edge of my visual field. I tried not to relish it too obviously. "This trip has to account for constant proximity to drinkable water, viable food, temperatures that won't kill him. You can mitigate that last one with clothes, but have you thought about what it's going to look like to other androids? The questions that carrying around human necessities is going to raise? Have you thought about the reality of V's body vs ours? Not even the arm and the tattoo, I mean the _basic _shit. We can feel hot and cold, but we have been able to self-regulate for all but the most extreme temperatures for thousands of years. His body does things ours would _never_ do. Shivering, sweating, flushing—hell, he's either going to have to bathe religiously or take up being absolutely fucking filthy because otherwise, someone's going to notice he has a scent. You want to get information the old-fashioned way, and that means going into close quarters with other androids. Places that might not have ventilation, places that might not have light. What are you going to say the first time someone asks why he doesn't have optic lights?

And that's not even _starting_ on you, scanner boy."

He flinched. "Me?! What about me?!"

"White hair isn't common on the ground. Neither are fancy clothes. You walk into a scavenger city dressed like that, no less than a dozen people will know you're YoRHa on sight. Same for V. This is ground zero and Anemone is a good leader, but once you leave? That black leather look isn't going to do you any favors. Mixed feelings might as well be bad blood when you're dealing with a stranger."

9S dropped his eyes and his hand wandered up to his chin. Hiding V in the ruins where the android presence was sparse was easy. Where they wanted to go, the density of androids would be much higher and if the plan was to keep V a secret and sneak 9S off to the moon, they'd need to blend in.

It was definitely what I was good at.

While 9S got lost in whatever unfathomable routines went on in a scanner's mind, I snuck a look at V. Neither of them said it, but I knew what was being asked of me. While 9S was on the moon, he was leaving V in my hands. The scanner trusted me to protect him, and if it came down to needing to fight, he knew I was better for the job than him. If anything happened to 9S, my life was forfeit. How the final protocol activated was unclear, but it would be my job to fight off whatever came. I would be the one responsible for getting V to the kingdom of night.

Dying at V's hands was the only choice that had presented itself to me, but continuing to protect him…

"I have a condition."

9S and V glanced at one another. "What is it?"

"Don't call me 8E. Call me Fern." V chuckled under his breath and I saw 9S load one of those over-bright smiles of his into the chamber. I flicked his forehead to discourage it. "Don't get the wrong idea. You need a name that's not 9S too. You're probably bordering on infamous outside here."

9S rubbed at his forehead, but the brilliance of his cheer took more than minor contact damage to ward off. "Does that mean you'll really do it? You're gonna come with us?"

"You'll definitely get shot if I don't," I sighed. "Neither of you know anything about how to act around normal androids… What kind of timeline are we looking at?"

"Time enough for 9S to consult with the other scanners within the ark," said V. "And for the appropriate preparations to occur."

"Ah, V... You're still vague and useless, just how I remember you." It wasn't so bad. In a way, I hoped he never changed. "Well, if you're going to haphazardly get yourselves together for a few days, I'm gonna lay low while the nanomachines finish patching me up… Let me know which way you want to head, and I'll leave the city to arrange transport."

"You still have those kinds of connections?"

"Nope." A smile came to my face and I closed my eyes. "I just have a talent for acquisition."


	77. Mercy Pity Peace

**26 March 11946 10:13 AM – Alloy Site**

At the top of the crater, 9S squinted against the rain and took a deep breath.

4S and 11S' black box signals were still down below, further back into the tower-fall tunnel than they had any reason to be. When they awoke to find 9S gone, they must have decided to hide instead of run. Not the best tactical decision from where 9S was standing, but it was incredibly lucky. Iota's strange behavior had set 4S' intuition on edge and was likely the reason they hadn't returned to the resistance camp.

Theta wouldn't have accepted anything less than a full handover of his audiovisual history if an escaped executioner and a kidnapped scanner were on her radar at the same time and 9S just walked back into camp like nothing happened.

Skidding down the muddy cliffs, he stepped carefully into the mouth of the cave. They'd left the modified pod out in the open. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted. "4S?!"

A scuffling sound echoed out from the hollow cavern. It soon turned into the hurried shuffle of two pairs of boots and two sets of optic lights appeared like animal eyes in the dark. 4S came into view first. A swirl of light from his spear de-materializing illuminated 11S' scowl just behind him.

4S sagged down onto the floor. "Thank goodness. I'm super glad it's you."

"Can't say I share the sentiment," 11S said tartly, crossing his arms tightly over his chest. "First you leave and let 3S tell us about the final protocol, then you disappear, then you walk back in like you just went out to take a walk. It's been nine hours! Where the hell have you been?!"

9S' almost smiled. He hadn't missed 11S' tart temperament, but after he'd been in such terrible condition for so long it was good to see him functioning as usual. "8E was here."

11S raised a brow, more at 4S than at 9S. "Another surviving YoRHa?"

"An executioner that killed an Army of Humanity officer," 4S answered, picking himself back up and leaning in to search 9S' face. "What was she doing here? She was supposed to be imprisoned somewhere in the camp."

"She escaped. So she could talk to me." Not entirely the truth, but they didn't need to know the precise details of what had happened. What they needed to know was what he'd discovered in her memories. "She didn't want you two involved, so she used an E-bomb and carried me off."

11 jolted and clutched 9S by his shoulders. "Holy shit, are you okay? Does she know about the protocol?"

"She does. And I'm fine. But I need to tell everyone in the Ark what she told me. Are you guys good for another dive?"

The two shared a look and gave a slow, leery nod of their heads.

* * *

**26 March 11946 10:30 AM – The Ark**

Legacy Reclamation's goals spread through the sub-network with the speed of a new virus.

The existence of 'Rho-2' as 8E had called her, is enough to bring out even the more reclusive members of the ark, and nearly all of the network's black-clad YoRHa gather on the stark platform like starlings darkening a field. One side of the crowd descends into fierce argument about whether or not Theta was right about not letting machines inherit the planet despite the absence of humans. The other side considers more somberly how unreasonable it is that they had all been designed to die and yet now their existence was deemed valuable to android kind. Because of something emergent and desirable that the Army of Humanity is hoping to replicate. Not by producing or restoring any YoRHa, of course. Their remains will be scraped and scavenged and put to use in beings that can properly be considered androids.

9S notes that there are more operators embroiled in the former subject, while the combat models dominate the latter. Eventually, the two discussions are going to merge and he hopes he is gone by then.

The scanners' concerns are comparatively localized. For them, there is still the plan to consider, nebulous as it is. 1S' previous hypothesis that Legacy Reclamation's interest in 9S might be a way for him to stay alive is stronger with this new information. Provided that he keeps showing signs of the kind of behavior they're hoping for, he can only become more valuable to them. As long they don't have his data, he needs to be alive. That can pave the way for him to get rid of the final protocol as well as secure some defense against YoRHa's makers if he is careful.

"The problem is that the Pods' internal network is really outside our expertise," says 1S. "The server didn't contain anything, not even design documents. Just some notes about when the Support System formally became the Pod system back around the end of Guadalcanal."

"I wasn't expecting there would be anything stored on the server. If they're supposed to be the project's administrators, any existing design data on them is probably stored in the same place as the full design data for our bodies."

"You mean on an external server," 4S' disembodied voice mumbles.

"I mean on the _moon_ server."

Five pairs of eyes snap to him, filled with everything from indignation to tired disgust. Even now, they haven't been able to fully throw away all that they were led to believe in. The moon is still a holy place, though the gods were never there.

"...It makes sense," 11S concedes.

"It does?" asks 32S.

"The protocol would have to operate from somewhere without a consistent connection. Otherwise, when the back door opened and the Bunker was destroyed, the protocol would be wiped out as well."

Where 1S excels in leadership and 4S at intuition, 11S has a talent for quickly breaking down dense information into only the important and actionable parts without losing sight of the big picture. Though he isn't particularly personable as scanners go, 9S remains glad for his restoration. With him there, they won't lose sight of the forest for the trees.

"I can't hack into my pod; the framework isn't compatible. And even if I could, the survival chances of going against the program's defensive system are too low. Not that it won't be dangerous in plenty of other ways, but I'll have to try a more direct approach." He meets all their eyes, one after the other. "Ito go to the moon server."

"Now is no time to be a lunatic," 42S says with a skeptical smile. "How are you gonna get to the moon, Greenhorn? YoRHa handled the shipment of supplies to the server pretty much exclusively."

"I don't need to go straight there. If I can get back into orbit, I can work it out from there." He opens up his readouts and brings up a globe. The resolution is terrible in every area outside the one they are in, but he is able to point out general locations. "With android manufacture in decline, the only place still sending up supplies might be the H zones. Getting there is my plan right now, but I don't have much to go on after that. I can't remember if I've ever been on missions out that way. Have any of you?"

"I have!" 32S raises his hand and trots forward, his eyes are wide and bright. "There's a place out there called the Isle of Man where materials from all eight H sectors get processed for shipment to Horizon 1!"

"Horizon 1...?"

1S' sigh bears the heavy disappointment of a teacher with a clever but careless pupil. "I'll assume that you have forgotten this information rather than having never learned it… Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 are resource dissemination bases. One circles the Earth along the prime meridian and the other along the Equator."

"They're basically big warehouses that other bases can request materials from," 32S adds eagerly. "Horizon 1 flies over Sector H about four times a day! But it's really hard to get close to the Isle of Man. Because it's a low aggression zone, the tech there is in good shape and security measures are sophisticated. They don't let strangers near it."

"You've been there once?"

"Yeah! Right after Normandy."

So it isn't official data, but 32S' personal experience from his ground activity. In many ways, that makes it far more valuable. "Can you guys gather up a packet of stuff just like that for me? Any information about the ground or the satellites or the sectors you think I can use, even if it might have been considered junk data on the Bunker."

"That's going to be a lot," says 4S. "Are you sure?"

"There's no flight units or transporters that'll take me out there," 9S says with a clumsy smile. "I'll be traveling for a long time..."

The real implications of what he's intending to do settle over each of them, and turns their small circle into a pinpoint of quiet amid the low roar of conversation that fills the sub-network.

3S is the first to recover, rubbing at his hair and gazing sleepily off at the gray sky. "I'll try to grab you a good map…"

His words break the trance and one after another they blurt things that might be useful.

"I did a lot of work in the EH Sector after Normandy."

"I know where most of the Defense HQs are in Sectors G, I, and J. Might have some supplies or a vehicle laying around if you're lucky."

"I'll put together a packet of basic information about Army of Humanity structure since you clearly never bothered to access any of the books in your room."

"Thank you," 9S says warmly. "Really. Could you also include anything you have about the kingdom of night or the development of a weapon called 'the dragon'?" They exchange a dozen confused looks that converge on 3S, but even he just shakes his head. They have no idea what he's talking about. "Ah… nevermind."

"I'll talk to the operators about it," 11S volunteers. "They have knowledge of many subjects that aren't accessible to field units."

"No need," a blunt and business-like female voice interrupts. "I'll take point on that."

9S head fills with static. The scanners part. Though she steps forward like she has more right to be there than any of them, there is a flash of the same flustered surprise he is sure is on his own face when her eyes meet his.

"Operator…?"

Her embarrassment grows and maybe as a defense mechanism she assumes the position she always took as an operator, her arms crossing over a clipboard she no longer has and her weight resting on one leg. "No, I'm… I'm 21**B** now."

Without a second thought, he rushes in and throws his arms around her. She makes a show of fussing, but there's no one there to see it. The other scanners have already scattered.

"I'm sorry," he blurts, his last memory of her rushing to the surface and blinding him so that he can only clutch her tighter and keep her from being taken away again. "I'm sorry I didn't—I couldn't…"

A feather-light pressure rests on his shoulders, then moves across his back. She returns his embrace like he's the most delicate thing in the world—like she's scared she'll hurt him. She sighs in familiar exasperation, but he can hear the affection that laces it. He wonders if it's always been there.

"_Couldn't_ is right. I always told you not to get in over your head. You're a scanner, 9S. You're not designed for direct combat with machines, much less a B model. Honestly, this was why I—"

Her words catch and trail away. He looks up at her and watches her narrow eyes look everywhere but at him, his mind already filling in the blanks. "Was it actually you who was my operator during that last scanner mission?"

"No. I was already…" She gingerly parts their hug and makes a stiff gesture at her body. It's still encased in the heavy armor that only combat models were capable of wearing. "I went through a model transition so I could maybe be assigned to you. So I could be with you. I thought… I could do a better job than 2B of keeping you safe." A stilted, bitter laugh rattles low in her throat. "I've since learned just how misguided that was. Even if I knew, I wouldn't have been able to ask to be an E model. I couldn't have..."

Maybe her memories were also tampered with, or she just didn't put it together. YoRHa died and lost memories all the time so his situation wouldn't have been that strange. She had always badgered him to stay focused, too. It strikes 9S that she might have ve sincerely believed he was just getting himself killed in the field all the time because he was accompanying the missions of a B unit.

"You said you were lonely…"

Her shoulders draw up. Coupled with her sad expression, 9S finds the gesture more fragile than tense. Maybe that's how it's always been underneath that business-only demeanor. "I'd rather you didn't bring that up. I would have liked to talk to you without having lost control of my body."

"I should have killed you properly," he apologizes. "I shouldn't have let it be done by someone like A2. Someone who didn't... care about you."

"And you did?"

"Yes!"

To be questioned on something he finds so obvious stings, but the moment he processes the complicated look of relief and happiness and heartache all mingling on her face, he knows she didn't mean to hurt him.

"That's the most responsible thing I've ever heard out of you," she says with her characteristic coolness. "But it was still reckless of you to think you could defeat a B unit with a logic virus infection unassisted."

She raises a halting hand, but whatever impulse she is acting on unravels before she can complete it. In the end, she clumsily pats his head. She's used to keeping him at a very precise distance and now, cutely, she doesn't seem to know how to behave with him. "I'm not an operator anymore so I don't have any functionality that can help you. The least I can do is talk to the other operators on your behalf."

"Hey, you get to be harsh with me, not with yourself." It's becoming a comfort to him just how average he is turning out to be. Everyone he'd cared about in the slightest had been lonely and dealing with it in ways he'd never have guessed. "When you're back outside, I'll take you to the orange grove, okay?"

"Orange grove?"

"Families eat together, right?" He smiles as bright as those memories still make him feel. That must definitely be the kind of feeling she had hoped to experience by coming to Earth to be with him. "The fruit's good if you go in winter. We'll have a picnic."

She makes an unimpressed face that does not match the softness of her voice. "…If you say so."

As he watches her go, warmth and a strong sense of resolve wash over him.

It feels good to make promises about the future again.

* * *

**27 March 11946 9:08 AM – The Forest Kingdom**

"I still don't get how the hell you broke all of them."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Next time I'll let _you_ fight off the magic grinning skull and you can show me how it's done."

The sounds of the two YoRHa bickering filled the dead stones of the castle with a certain kind of life. They'd bickered about everything since they regrouped, and 9S' emergence from the ancient cellars and fresh coat of dirt and cobwebs had only soured his mood further. Fern had not a repentant bone in her body for the trouble either. The four bottles 9S managed to salvage were even filthier than he was, and now they were bickering about how it should be her job to clean the bottles since he was the one to find them. A suggestion Fern denied based on 'not having a delicate touch'.

V was content to relax against the stones and ignore both of them. It wasn't a hard task. All morning he'd been occupied with an ominous dream from the night before.

The dream had taken place in a field of lunar tears. The pure white petals stretched on forever in stark contrast to the black field where he'd fought the Watchers. His presence was a lone, dark intrusion amid their glow. His back had been turned so that he couldn't see his own face, only that he seemed to be staring up at the sky. Until the final moment, it was a boring, uneventful kind of dream. The kind he would have paid no mind at all.

At the last moment, his face became visible. A pure white flower grew in the same place as Zero's, and as he watched, blood seeped from its center, over the petals, and down his cheek to stain the field red.

He'd experienced no ill effects since waking, but he was wary of such things now. The dream was silent, at least. Not a sound to be heard. Even if he had been left with some kind of residue from his contact with Zero, the song was dead and gone.

A stack of books dropped down beside him, drawing him out of his thoughts. Fern was leaning over him. "You'll probably want these. You seem like the type who gets bored easily."

"Pod has an excellent archive of everything I could hope to read," he said, even though he was already turning the spines to face him

"Pods are YoRHa tech. Ground units don't have things like that. Both of them are going to have to stay out of sight while we're traveling."

V glanced at the silver support unit. Her point was made so he shrugged and began flipping through to the title pages of those too weathered to have legible exteriors.

"How are we going to hide them?" asked 9S. "They're not compact and we have two."

"I dunno. Backpacks?"

"So we need _three_ backpacks total, is what you're telling me. Not just two."

"Oh my God, Nines—"

"**Hey.** You don't get to call me that."

"Then hurry up and decided on a name! I picked mine in two minutes just looking at shit on the ground!"

V tuned them out as they quarreled about the importance of names and the logistics of transporting pods. It might have been a cause for concern if there were any actual vitriol flowing between them, but even at their loudest all V could hear was the squabbling of siblings. If he was going to indulge in the luxury of literature, it need not be anything so wasteful as a full stack of books—even if his companions could carry them, it was a waste. A single book would be good, provided it was the right one.

Not that he trusted Fern to know his tastes.

There was no reason she should, and yet he was greeted with a faded blue book with a familiar name on the title page.

"Heinrich Heine…"

Fern detached herself from her argument with 9S instantly. She leaned over to look at the pages as he flipped, her face strangely bright. "Oh right, that's the one. You muttered a lot of gibberish while you were hypothermic. I thought you were delirious—well, you were, but pod said it was poetry. Heine's the guy who wrote what you were repeating, right?"

She almost sounded like the old Fern again. 8E didn't worship him even a fraction compared to her old self, but her abrasively upbeat demeanor had withered into something a little more genuine for this offering. She was not the kind who would have bothered to hide it if she'd included Heine in order to mock him.

"…It's in good condition."

She rolled her eyes. "_Ooooh_, high praise."

He gave a quiet 'hmph'. Sarcasm was wasted in the mouth of someone that looked that proud of herself.

* * *

**28 March 11946 5:22 PM – The Underground Lake**

"He falls asleep pretty easy when you're around."

It was just a remark while I was watching V sleep just beyond the shaft of muted light spilling into the cavern. I didn't mean to be petty or to sound sad about it, but it probably came out that way.

I couldn't be sure if it was the dark or the sort of echoey silence or the cool, stagnant air down there, but the place made me feel strange. Every time I looked at the cloudy beside us, I imagined myself slipping quietly in and never be seen again. It was everything I didn't want out of my death, but the thought was consistent.

9S didn't seem to mind. He didn't mind a lot of things now that he'd made his peace with V. For some reason that made me want to mess with him more than if he just hated me the way he'd hated Fern.

Couldn't really do that when my body plates were popped up and he had his hands in my circuits though.

"It's the sun." Pushing up his sleeve for the nth time, he pulled a length of wire from above my chipset. Like a worm being pulled from the dirt, I felt it slide from around the back of my neck before it popped free. A tiny node capped the end, with a flickering light that went out by itself after a few seconds. "When he's out of the sun, he tends to fall asleep. Something about human biology."

"They're diurnal." Blue eyes popped up over the edge of my chest plate. "What? They are."

"I'm wondering…" He shifted to the other side of me and again with the sleeves; why didn't he just take the damn coat off? "Why you know so much about humans."

"The same reason you do, genius."

He shot me a look that we both knew was pointless. The great thing about having your heart set on dying was that intimidation was pretty much impossible. The only thing on this planet that scared me at all was the idea of Rho-2 taking my memories and acting like it would be a favor to me. "I gained knowledge through experience. It sounds more like you just read through all of pod's archives on them."

"Yes and no. My last self was kind of a fanatic. She did a lot of old-fashioned info gathering after she discovered V, and I know what she knew. A lot of it is domestic shit. Things humans needed. Things they wanted. What their lives were like. For the shack, probably."

I watched his eyes focus on nothing as he weighed that last admission.

"She probably wanted a family," he said permissively. "I'm finding out most of us did."

He wasn't entirely wrong. Fern couldn't remember anything about where she'd come from and everything about her identity was gained experiences piled on top of the soft, hungry bog of a dozen assumptions always ready to swallow whatever she built. I knew 9S thought the shack was weird, and I knew V thought the shack was weird because _I _thought the shack was fucking weird. But it was the sophisticated game of make-believe Fern played inside that I found especially upsetting.

Without knowing a thing about V, she'd imagined a whole life for him. A family, friends, a neighborhood, co-workers. All of them acted out whatever snippets of old literature she could find. They ate, they laughed, they fought, they got sick and recovered; they had pointless conversations that didn't mean anything at all other than it made them feel more real to her.

That Fern had wanted to be a part of a _human_ family. Key distinction, but I wasn't going to tell 9S just how far down that spiral went. She wasn't here anymore, and I wasn't going to be answering hard questions like 'what the fuck' on her behalf.

All I volunteered was, "If you say so."

He did another sweep of my circuitry, but there were no more obvious tracking-related components he could identify. While I closed my plates back up and my anti-magnetic skin pulled back over my body, he kept his back politely turned. I wondered if he'd learned that from V's consistently strong reaction to the concept of being seen naked, or if it was just because my model was sexed differently than his.

"Your turn."

He stripped everything above the waist without much of a fuss—just a single aside glance before he laid down and retracted his skin below the neck. Probably as he assured himself I wasn't going to rip his OS chip out. His plates popped open with a series of clicks and a gentle hiss of pressure being released, and for a while, I worked with only the sound of rain on the surface of the lake, water dripping on stone, and the distant clanking of machines in the tunnels.

9S wasn't more or less riddled with tracking devices than I was. The process of removing them was surgical, but the silence got dense pretty quick without either of us really meaning for it to. You couldn't just let someone poke around in your circuits without feeling exposed, any more than you could be the one doing the poking around without getting self-conscious.

He'd at least had the task of identifying them circuits to keep him occupied. I was just following the instructions he'd built as he went, avoiding the two I really didn't look forward to.

"You're leaving after this, right?"

An obvious question. There because he probably found all of this as awkward as I did. "Yeah."

I carefully raised his motherboard's sub-panel. The black box hovered in perfect balance at the center of a ring-shaped compartment that held it in place. The light inside strobed as placidly as the ripples on the lake. Just like there had been inside of me, two non-essential wires, one black, one white, were connected to the mechanism.

I drew my hands back just to steady them.

9S and I were working together, but that arrangement was way too fresh for this. We didn't trust each other nearly enough to be sticking our fingers near each other's black boxes. Unfortunately, I was the only one he could examine for tracking devices without constraint and the only one who would remove his without asking any difficult questions.

To give my thought routines something else to focus on aside from the fact that I was staring at the physical embodiment of his heart and the place where all his personality data was stored, I kept talking.

"If I can't get a hold of any vehicles on the mainland we could be hiking four to six months. Whatever needs to happen with this Isle of Man deal isn't going to be a matter of just a few days, and neither is getting V to the night kingdom."

"It takes however long it takes," he said solemnly. "Is the rendezvous point still synchronized on your map?"

"Haven't made any changes since you gave it to me. You gonna be able to pick up the rest of the stuff you need?"

"Yeah. We should be fine."

"When you planning to meet me?"

"I don't think it'll be more than a week before we leave. We should be able to meet you up at the rendezvous point four days after that."

I couldn't think of another question and he couldn't think of another thing to say. I pulled the last wire from his black box compartment in silence somehow even more awkward than before, and carefully lowered his motherboard back into place. We both breathed a little easier for it, and I let him close himself back up in peace.

For the trouble, we both got a jumbled pile of wires and microchips that had come from our bodies. Most went dead as soon as they could no longer draw power from our bodies. A few still blinked and flickered with some kind of emergency supply.

I kicked my pile into the lake. 9S threw his.

With a sigh of relief, I pulled up the hood on my cloak. "See you at the cape."

* * *

**30 March 11946 6:15 AM – The Amusement Park**

The castle wasn't a good place to stay with the extended rain. The moisture seeped into even the innermost stones and refused to allow any warmth or comfort. With the camp aware of him, V resisted going back to the skyscrapers in the ruins, so in the end, he returned to the park.

More specifically, to the shack.

It was the only place that didn't need to have any work put into it in order to be made livable and it was a secluded area where 9S could come and go with supplies without worrying about who might be watching. Already, two neat piles of clothes sat on top of the table. One for each of them. On the floor, leaned against the legs of the chairs, their bags were packed with things 9S thought they might need. Everything from kindling and carefully sharpened skewers to rolls of netting to reflective sunglasses that 9S had managed to dig up somewhere. Apparently they were to hide V's lack of optic lights once they were in the scavenger city.

Humility was leaned against the wall. The longer V looked at it, the more certain he was of the words on the edge of his tongue.

"I'd like to entrust that to you."

9S blinked at him, followed his gaze, and glanced back. "Are you sure? It's important to you isn't it?"

"I can trust you with it." He stood and retrieved it with no hassle at all. The weight was beneath his notice now. He leaned it toward 9S, who leaned back by a bit, visibly replaying the sword's history behind his eyes. "I have the power to swing it if needed now, but I'd still rather not use it at all."

Griffon snickered from the back of the bench. "Nelo's sword ain't a devil arm but it's still one of Machiavelli's. You sure we shouldn't give it to the one that's actually made for fighting instead of boy-bot?"

The sword de-materialized on the spot, as if to firmly deny the suggestion. It re-appeared on 9S' back, and he turned an experimental circle with it. "Doesn't feel any different than Iron Will or my other large blades."

"And I'm sure I'll have a great time watching you swing both, twiggy."

9S' face scrunched, but ringing from Pod 153 interrupted whatever retort he was charging. To V's surprise, the face of a machine appeared when 9S answered. Their conversation was brief, some mention of parts that made V's brain tune out, and no sooner did 9S hang up than he was bolting out the door saying he was headed to the Machine Village and he would be back.

In the quiet, Griffon shuffled. "You just didn't want to carry it, did you?"

"I said what I meant."

"Yeah, but you're strong enough to carry that thing easy now. You didn't need the kid for that." His beaks twitched and spread and clicked thoughtfully back into place. "I'm not sure you really even need us anymore after all the shit you've absorbed."

V raised a brow. Griffon was a demon. It was in his nature to observe the strength of those around him, but that was far from the kind of conclusion he'd expected from one like him. "...The same could be said of you. The basin has granted you all you need to draw in magic for yourselves. Nightmare is bound to me under different circumstances, but you and Shadow have no need of me in order to survive in this world."

The two stared at each other. It was a reality they must both have been thinking about, but never had a moment to bring up. Necessity had always been the most pressing of the circumstances that bound them, but survival was no longer a factor for any of them. Not in the way it used to be.

Griffon was the first to crack, with a loud mocking snort. "No way any of us are gonna break contract and miss out on a dragon hunt. We'd die. Of boredom. Cause it's boring here. Boring as shit."

"It _would_ be embarrassing for a demon, even a nightmare, to die of boredom." V scratched under Griffon's chin—and Shadow's too when she seeped up from the floor onto the bench and butted her head insistently against his chest. "And I only seem to be able to manifest a meaningful devil trigger by temporarily absorbing one of you, so our contract still serves me well."

"And that's the most important part, isn't it, _your majesty._" Griffon threw a wing around his head, cackling loud and abrasive as he was wont to do. "Looks like you're still stuck with us til the end!"

V gave a smile and shrug of surrender, as though it was out of his hands. "Seems that way."

* * *

**2 April 11946 2:48 PM – The Forest Outpost**

After seven full days of rain, the sun made a triumphant return.

Narcissus clusters rose proudly in glistening patches beside streams just beginning to settle down and clear up from rain swell. Pollen hadn't yet choked the air between the trees closest to the city ruins, so the breeze was fresh and easy to take in.

Anthurium sat off to the side of his tent, soaking in the sunshine with his eyes closed and hands resting across his middle like an old man having a midsummer nap. At the sound of V's cane rapping against a stone, his eyes peeked open. Wrinkles worried at his brow as soon as he recognized who V was.

"You're alone today," he noted. "Not here to drop off another report, I hope."

"No." V ran his fingers over the line in the table where the shade ended, and the light began. "I've come to express my gratitude."

"You'll pardon my saying so, but you don't seem the type."

At that, V smirked. "You would be right. But I am not here to thank you for acts done on my behalf."

"Ahh, I see I see." Just like that, Anthurium's cautious demeanor melted and he spared an endlessly cordial smile for V that made it easy to understand why 9S trusted him despite how little time the two spent together. "Glad to hear you and 9S made up, but you don't need to thank me, sir."

"And you do not need to call me sir."

"I think I do. You pre-date the war and that deserves its respect. Come in, come in, please. Take a seat."

V couldn't argue with that skewed perception of his age, given he was the one who told the androids he was a weapon from thousands of years ago. He took the offered seat instead, sparing a moment to examine Anthurium's permeating aura of welcome and good-will from a reasonable distance. It reminded V a little of the man who owned the store where Vergil would buy books as a child.

"9S expressed to me that he'd wanted to find something for you, but never could, on account that there was nothing you wanted. I have a hard time believing that is true."

Anthurium chuckled. "You've been alive a long time. You must know how it gets after so many years. It's hard to think of things being any different than they are."

There was something enjoyable about Anthurium's way of speaking. It was old. Wizened. Talking to him felt like talking to another adult, and left V astonished and a little worried at what a pleasant change of pace it was. He pulled the book from his coat and pressed it gently onto the table between them. Anthurium stared at it quizzically, his brows knitting as he observed the very slight bulge in the pages. He flipped it open, to where a single red flower in the shape of a heart and been nestled between two blank pages.

Lifting it from the page, he turned it around and around. "What's this?"

"It's what Witch Hazel was looking for." Anthurium's grip tensed a fraction, and the flower began to shake in his hand. "Your namesake."

For such a large man, the sound that left him was finer than a thread of spider's silk. He drew the flower in close to his chest, but just as quickly set it down so he could cover his face. He didn't cry. V did not expect him to. But he was not expecting the shudder that came older the old android to be a precursor to laughter either. He howled with it in short but rolling rhythm that went on and on and every time he tried to pick up the flower it seemed to come back only stronger.

It was finally ebbing out when a shuffle of footsteps came in to fill the space it left behind, and three black coats came into view.

"Oh, is that him? That's V right?" The voice wasn't 9S' but it had the same energy to it. "Hi, V!"

"4S," the other one chided sharply. "Why are you talking to him like you know him?"

The energetic one waving at his one arm and the one with the shorter hair and shorter temper stood on either side of 9S. There was something fascinating about seeing him next to other scanners. It let him normalcy this world otherwise denied him. On the other hand, it was one of those things that made it quietly clear that 9S was built, rather than born. The other two boys had slightly different faces and different hair, but the way their bodies filled their uniforms was identical. It was only how they moved that was different.

9S tilted his head at V, his brows twitching in a silent ask that V answered by flicking his eyes toward the book. That seemed to be enough for him. He smiled and tugged the other two scanners on.

"Come on, let's go."

"But I want to meet him! 11S you're curious too right? He's super old, think of the songs he must know."

11S spared V another glance. Why song should sway him, V didn't know, but the prospect clearly tempted him. "H… He's a weapon, he probably doesn't know any songs." He leaned conspiratorially close to 9S. "Does he?"

"Guys, we'll take all day if we stop for every little thing. I've still gotta take your trackers out."

"You didn't answer my question."

The last thing V heard as they passed around the bend and into the forest was the sound of 9S groaning.

Anthurium gave a thin chuckle once he was sure they were gone. "They all looked like brothers."

"So they did."

Again, the comfortable silence settled over them. Anthurium took the flower in his hand with an almost apologetic smile. "I found Witch Hazel in the grove a long time after they died. I never knew what had happened."

"9S was able to recover some of his memories. Just a few logs, of the times they had met with you. It left an impression on them to be named. And that you did not know 'the flower for which you were named'."

"That's how they phrased it alright. I just gave them that name because of the trees." Another laugh shakes Anthurium, though this one is silent. "They asked me if I'd ever seen an anthurium before but I never thought they'd run off and try to find one. You really...went and found this for me?"

"My thanks," said V, rising from his seat. "To you, and to the boy himself."

"You're awful roundabout if you did this for me to thank him."

"What better expression of thankfulness than to do something good for someone he cares for and who has cared for him in kind?"

"Sounds like two steps too many." He placed the flower back on the page with a grin. "But I guess you did say you're not the type for expressing gratitude. No wonder you take the long way around it."

Even in teasing, Anthurium was good-natured.

V drummed his fingers along his cane as he circled around the table, back into the spring sunlight. Humans were superstitious and quick to give meaning to that which had none inherent, but V thought Anthurium lived up to the meaning bestowed on his namesake.

'Hospitality.'

* * *

**3 April 11946 12:29 PM – The Abandoned Factory**

9S perched on the edge of a large red shipping container while V sat below. The factory loomed unseen behind him, the sunlight casting the shadows of cranes and beams and metal bridges somewhere out of sight. His eyes were on the smoky gray waters. Ones they would be crossing soon.

He had taken every measure he thought he could, and there was nothing else to be done. They could have left right at that moment.

Only he hadn't thought of who to leave 2B's restoration to.

There was no one he could put that kind of faith in. Anemone was sympathetic, but she was beholden to the chain of command and didn't have the know-how to do it quietly on her own. There was no way he would risk anyone in Legacy Reclamation knowing about 2B's body. Jackass had the know-how and didn't give a shit about authority, but she was also…Jackass. He wouldn't be able to rest if he left the ruins and she was the one he had to rely on to fix 2B in the event of his death.

He wanted to entrust it to other YoRHa. 4S and 11S had the necessary know-how and they didn't _need_ the authority. He'd taken them somewhere remote, as they'd asked, and removed their tracking components, but they had their own goals and they revolved around not going too far from the ark. That meant they'd always be in Theta's range, and if she found them, he had no doubt she had the means to get them to tell her pretty much anything she wanted.

Never mind that if 9S died, there'd be no 4S or 11S left to fix anything anyway.

Maybe that was why he'd come here of all places. The mission that first brought him to the factory was where he liked to think this iteration of his life began. He didn't remember most of it. Lost in the black box reaction. But he remembered the warmth in her voice when she thanked him for uploading her data back on the Bunker. How happy it made him. And then how his heart had plummeted at her dejected response when she learned that he didn't remember doing it.

They could only have been on that mission a few hours, and they probably hadn't spent any time physically together at all. Putting someone else's memories before his own was his first clue that she must have been someone special. That quickly, he'd wanted to know why. What made her so important? What would he have to do to hear her speak so affectionately to him again?

Looking back at that past version of himself made his temperature spike with embarrassment. It amazed him just how innocent he was.

"Something on your mind?" asked V.

"You're not even looking at me, am I that obvious?"

"Yes."

He took a deep breath. The ocean was right there, but it was a bit too deep and full of dangerous debris to throw him in. "This was where I died last, back in March with 2B." He pointed out at the broken bridge. "Our black box reaction took out four goliaths and most of this part of the bridge. Our old bodies might be together underwater around here somewhere."

"How morbid."

"Really? It seemed like a kind of happy thought to me."

V looked up as if he had an objection, but strangely he seemed to drop it before it could go anywhere. "I suppose decaying together would be a kind of romance to an android."

Well, he hadn't meant it like that but now that 9S considered it that way…

He folded his fingers busily in his lap to try and control a sudden burst of energy that fluttered through his black box. Unfortunately, with his hands occupied, he unconsciously started to bounce his heels against the containers.

V pushed the cane flat against his shins and glared up at him as the booming racket slowly faded away

"S...sorry."

From further up the steps, someone called out. "Who's there?!"

9S knew that voice. He hopped down and trotted around the edge of the rusty red container. Anemone stood at the top of the stairs with a hand at her hip, ready to fire if needed. She relaxed as soon as she saw him, while 9S tilted his head. Pascal was with her.

"What are you two doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same." Anemone nodded a little to his right, where V had stalked out behind him. "Nice meeting you for the third time."

"Third?" V asked.

"You were with that silver Pod out by the rosebush last fall, weren't you?" She scowled. "You should've said hello."

"Ah, yes... You were carrying the kind of gun I didn't want to get involved with. Particularly if you were none too pleased that a stranger was eavesdropping on you."

"Why would you have been eavesdropping on me in the first place? I was alone."

"You are the only android I've encountered yet who sings."

9S watched in disbelief as the wary tension flowed right out of Anemone. She laughed in a tired, almost helpless kind of way. "Then you never encountered Rose."

"Who's Rose?" 9S asked, looking between the two of them in utter bafflement. 9S had never heard Anemone talk about anyone from her past but A2, and V hadn't batted a lash at the name.

"The previous resistance leader," Anemone answered coolly. In the space of a second, she re-gathered herself and closed back up. "Apologies for being jumpy. Pascal and I were discussing shutting down the factory."

"What? Why?"

Anemone crossed her arms loosely over her stomach. "While it's true that the vast majority of machine life was destroyed when the Tower collapsed, new machine life has been pumping out of the automated system in the factory at a mostly uninterrupted pace. The population density of the machines is climbing because they have no orders to re-distribute to other zones."

"So it is," said Pascal. "In order to avoid saturation which would invariably lead to further conflict, we're hoping to shut the system down and replace it with a manual, as-needed system."

A tendril of suspicion curled along the base of 9S' spine. "Did Theta suggest that?"

"Yes! I had come to the camp to discuss resource scarcity and it was her first suggestion. She has quite the mind for these matters. I had not even given this old place a second thought, but she was able to see potential conflict such a long way off."

It was difficult to keep his face from darkening. Theta had probably not considered the factory at all until they started burning bodies in it and it became obvious it was still very active. Shutting it down meant that the machine numbers in the area could only ever decrease while they worked on a replacement. Which could take any length of time she wanted, really. There was no conflict. No reason for someone as good-hearted as Pascal to think anything was off about the situation.

He put on his confused-but-not-really-interested face and reached back to squeeze V's hand. "Sounds complicated. I don't want to interrupt, and we weren't here for any specific reason, so we'll get out of your way."

"Oh, it's no trouble at all! Do take care, 9S."

The moment they were out of range, V coughed politely, and 9S unclenched his fingers to let V's hand slip away.

"Is there something you wish to do about that?" he asked.

It was a legitimate problem. Theta was giving a legitimate solution. It just happened to be one that served Legacy Reclamation's purposes, and if 9S said so, it would probably cost all of them their fragile peace. More machine-android conflict was the last thing he needed. Peace was the more beneficial state of affairs for his goals and V's as well.

It didn't sit well with him, but there was nothing good gained by making this his problem.

"No..." He smiled feebly. "Head back without me and get some sleep. We can head out at midnight; there's just something I have to do first."


	78. Where the Heart Is

There must have been some magic to lunar tears all along. A quiet kind that pooled in quiet places.

A full year had passed since Emil had first welcomed him to this place, but there was no sign of a fallen petal anywhere. Decay never sickened the sweetness of the air. It didn't make sense given the biological rules that governed other plant life, but it was what 9S had observed. In a world where everything was designed to end, their glow was as constant as the sun.

He remembered the frantic and looping surge of desperation to find 'home' that had brought him to this place for the first time after the tower fell. Another view of the night sky seemed so impossible at the time. Now that he was going back into orbit, he thought the silver grains of glittering light made for a better view than anything he'd seen out of the windows of the Bunker.

And with 2B there, it really did feel like home.

Watching her face, he remembered that the thing that had set off that frantic need to find home was Aster. Because she had thanked him. Because she was smiling so softly with the possibility that she and Gladiolus could be together until they broke down. She needed nothing else. Not humans, not any greater purpose—just that one person.

9S closed his eyes and imagined frayed wires and cracked exoskeletal plates. He pictured dust and lichens settled on metal remains, his inner components exposed and his black box dull and broken inside its compartment, right beside hers.

Decaying together _was_ a kind of love for an android. There was nothing to suppose about it.

He sat up before he relaxed into the idea more than he should. It might be nice if their lives ended that way someday, but there was still so much more time he wanted to spend with the living 2B. So many promises he wanted to keep and missed opportunities to he wanted to revisit.

On the other side of her body, the parts and materials he had gathered for her repair were laid in neat, organized rows from the smallest to the largest atop his coat. He didn't need it where he was going. Placed in the center where it couldn't be missed was the package that contained all of 9S' hopes.

He didn't know how often Emil visited the flowers since regaining his memory, but the tire treads in the dirt by the elevator door suggested it was often enough. He was the only other person who had a key to the elevator and the only person who could come and go unchallenged to do what 9S asked:

_If I don't come back in two years, please bring Pascal to 2B._

Could Pascal actually fix 2B? 9S didn't know. He could make android parts, but installation was probably a bit over his head. Yet 9S had every faith that Pascal would do it. When Pascal read that everything he needed was there and should be fine so long as the black box was installed last, he would figure out a way to piece her together. Even if it took him months. History proved that certain things were innate and didn't change no matter how many resets there were. Pascal would do it because he was asked and because if it came to that, it would be 9S' last request. He would do it because it's what the previous Pascal would have done—because his new iteration still had the willingness and desire to do good.

Theta was already abusing it for political gain. 9S merely hoped to rely on it to save one life.

It was still a little unbelievable to him that he was entrusting something as important as 2B's restoration to a machine, but there was no other being in the city ruins he could imagine leaving her to. And maybe 9S could hope that when Pascal read that Theta couldn't know, he might be a little less trusting of her.

"Man, things have only gotten stranger since the war ended..." It felt a little silly to talk to her when she couldn't hear him, but he brought his knees up to his chest and kept going. "The world is complicated, 2B. I've had a lot to think about since I decided to repair you, about all the patterns I've seen play out again and again."

"I've met a lot of people since you died. Learned more about people I already knew. The Commander, you, my operator; even the other scanners. We all had the same purpose and I think we were able to justify our existence that way. But I don't think it's what any of us were really living for. We all have our treasures, and I don't think we can change those treasures so easily. Whether I was climbing the tower to kill A2 or falling in a pit looking for data to get V home, the reason I did those things always traced back to you."

He frowned and scratched at his hair while replaying Theta's talk with 8E. Resilience and the determination to progress. The ability to develop one's own purpose and the ability to self-direct without falling into despair. Each one was a sort of complicated idea and he wasn't sure he had any of those things. Without a war to fight in or any obligation to be a soldier, all he knew he had for certain was the same thing he'd always had: the desire to be with 2B.

If he had anything special or had changed at all after meeting V, maybe he was a little more patient? His imagination had certainly improved now that he had 'You do not have to accept this' lodged in his thought routines.

"I wonder what might've happened if V had shown up sooner?" he murmured. "If he had told us both that we didn't have to accept things as the YoRHa plan designed them to be…"

Trying to path out that alternate series of events might have been interesting, but his train of thought switched tracks almost immediately to wondering what 2B and V would think of one another. It was easy to imagine the two of them sitting together on a rainy day. She'd always surprising him with the eloquent but grim thoughts that occasionally came out of her and knowing their shared history shed light on her unexpectedly well-rounded ideas about sin and war. She had heavy thoughts; maybe the heavy poems V liked would be to her tastes.

"I don't know if you'll ever meet V," he said with a crooked smile. "He's kinda cold to strangers and I think he'd rather die than admit he does anything for other people just to be nice… but I think you would enjoy each other's company if you got the chance to know one another. I'll be sure to tell you all about him someday."

He held up the black box from his spare body, feeling the weight of it and watching the gentle dormant strobe of the light inside. Sitting it gently atop her chest, he climbed back to his feet. With care, he gouged Virtuous Contract down into the soil, leaving a pure white marker above 2B's head. After a moment's consideration, he pushed Cruel Oath down beside it. If he should fail, at least in this regard he would remain at her side.

"Sleep a little longer, 2B. I'll be back before you know it."

* * *

The dream of the white flowers didn't come every time V slept. It was an intermittent thing, here and gone and here again. It never changed. Never progressed beyond blood spilling silently down to taint the field. But every time V had the dream, it faded a little more. Like the sound from a shore he was slowly but surely traveling away from. Whatever remained of Zero was passing through him, and soon enough it would pass away.

When he stirred, he did not have to ask if 9S had finished his business. Readiness radiated from him. In the muted whites and tans and browns of his resistance clothes and under hair gone the same black color as V's, he waited. What was reflected in his eyes was not boyish eagerness or silent melancholy, but the patient certainty that the object of his desire was accessible, and he only had to cross the distance. Reaching the place that was thousands of kilometers away, and then the one that was hundreds of thousands of kilometers away, were mere footsteps on his path.

V's road toward the remnants of the dragon was no different.

The quiet was natural. Comfortable. No questions needed asking. No last-minute forgotten things needed pursuit. There was only V shrugging on the breathable but thick cotton shirt emblazoned with the symbol of the resistance. The old one, with its burnt left sleeve, he tossed in the fireplace. A new glove covered his left arm neatly and comfortably. All he had to do was not burn through this one as well.

Outside, the sun was as high in the sky as ever, irreverent of the late hour. 9S stood at the pier's edge between the remains of balloons flapping at the edge of their strings in the high wind. He threw his YoRHa uniform into the churned brown seafoam, and V sent his coat the same way. They watched the heavy leather vanish into the rest of the trash and pulled their hoods up.

It really was no different than all the other times Vergil had become no one and vanished. Night wasn't necessary in order to walk in shadow.

They followed the coast headed west at an unhurried pace. Until the familiar structures of the city gave way and the coastal air began to sing. The piles of detritus at the tide line clanged and clanked for the waves washing over them the way chimes rang for the wind.

It was only there, deep into the no man's land where it was certain that they were alone that 9S paused. "We all clear, Pod?"

V carried the light supplies—his clothes and the water. From 9S' pack, a black antenna and a silver one poked out of the upper flap.

"AFFIRMATIVE," the pods answered in unison.

"NO MACHINE LIFEFORMS DETECTED."

"NO RESISTANCE SIGNALS DETECTED."

9S stretched his arms high up over his head and gave a loud sigh that he must've been holding. "Undercover operations aimed at evading androids sure are stiff."

"It was a good act," V admitted. Fooled him, at the very least. "But I hope you haven't worn yourself out that quickly."

He folded his hands behind his head and smiled. "No, I'm good. As long as I run a thought routine that keeps my mind occupied I can do that a long time. It's how I usually travel long distances without getting bored."

"REPORT: UNIT 9S OFTEN DEVIATES FROM IDEAL PATHING."

"_Anyway_." He glared over his shoulder at the black antennae already vanishing back into his pack. "It's nothing but travel from here on out. You ready?"

"I should hope."

9S spared a look back at the city. "I feel like I should do something here. Do you have anything for this?"

V raised a brow. "Anything such as?"

"I dunno; a poem? You must know a happy poem or something right? Or at least something for saying goodbye?"

He followed 9S' gaze. The city was just a huddle of blocky shapes in the distance. He couldn't say any single place there meant anything special—he was accustomed to moving around and attached to places even less readily than to other people. Perhaps that was why he still thought of the van when he thought of just what it was he was trying to return to. It was a place that went with him and met him where he needed it to. In that same way, everything he had grown comfortable and familiar with had left the ruins with him. There was nothing to miss or leave behind.

But that wasn't the case for 9S, was it?

His fingers drummed along his cane, mind wandering along what would be best, and eventually, he began to recite: "_I bless thee, vision as thou art, I bless thee with a human heart; With earnest feeling I shall pray, for thee when I am far away_."

"Thanks." A sincere smile warmed 9S' face. "That was actually pretty nice."

"Your tastes are not a challenge to guess."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

V smiled aside and wiggled his cane between them. "It means I look forward to the pleasure of returning home all the more to say that I kept company with a lovesick android."

9S pressed a hand to his collar, and if he'd had any pearls to clutch, V was sure would have. "Lovesick?!"

"We are all young once." He strolled off ahead, swinging his cane with growing appreciation that it was Heine of all poets that 8E had re-acquainted him with. "_Never has she found you grieving, for her love with anxious prayer; all you asked was quiet living, quietly to breathe her air—"_

9S shoved him, and V was nearly lifted from his feet. He tumbled down to the sand, just barely righting himself before the surf could wash over him and make the trip significantly less pleasant. 9S stood over him with a hand on one hip, high-headed and grinning victoriously.

"It's not a river," he said. "But it'll do."

V couldn't help but laugh. "I suppose that one is yours for free. The next, will cost you."

"Yeah, yeah~" He held out his hand. "Come on. Let's get going."

V was tempted to ignore the gesture on principle. But something gave him pause. The last time 9S struck, foolish as it was, he had all but fallen apart. V still remembered the way his hands trembled in his lap long after they'd moved on from the moment.

The hand that 9S held out to him was steady. Even when V took it just to be sure, it remained perfectly at ease in his own.

* * *

An old lighthouse still miraculously intact made a great vantage point to watch the cape from.

The remains of a road lined the edge of the cape right up to the place it became a pier. No skyscrapers to be seen. A few low buildings whose architecture was too small and simple for machines to replicate, so all that remained of them were Heritage Restoration's last efforts, long since overtaken by local flora and rising sea levels. A train had run through the area once. The tracks were long gone now, but one of the cars was half-submerged in the ruins of a station. Seaweed had rooted in the remains of the cushions and swayed with the gentle tide. Up this far the waters were clearer and cleaner and the flicker of real fish in the shallows was more frequent than the dull gleam of machine imitations.

The area wasn't untouched. Not a lot of places could be after six thousand years of war. A few machines that must've been a part of the network when the tower fell pockmarked the otherwise pretty nice view. A lot of green, otherwise. A lot of bright spring flowers. There was no tactical advantage to a tiny rural area like this one. The pier was too small for a shipping vessel and the island chain made it too much of a hassle to sail a large vessel this way anyway. Android presence was at zero for kilometers.

I did a thorough sweep, so I was sure of that much.

I'd spent the days since my arrival alone with the wind and the weather and the occasional chipmunk. And my memories, of course. Hard to get away from those. I thought of all the names I'd had and the places I'd been assigned to. I'd played twenty-two different roles during my three active years. The early ones had gone a lot faster. I didn't have a lot of names then. I would find my target and in about a month I'd have gotten whatever information command was looking for out of them. Kill them, move on, repeat. There was never any time for any of them to give me a name.

Taking stock only made me surer that I wanted to be called Fern. I wanted to die doing what Fern did. It felt like a sneaky way of admitting I wanted to live on as something other than an executioner, but even if that was true, it didn't change things. All the names I wore were me, and the past wasn't going to go away if I tried not looking at it.

No matter what, I owed those twenty-two targets. They were my friends, my allies, and my lovers and no human had conveniently come along to tell me I could choose not to kill them. Even if I cried, even if I erased myself over and over, I still killed them. My death was the least they were owed.

Dying hated and scorned was good enough for me. But if I could give my existence for a human? That had the kind of weight an android would appreciate. That at least made some sense of how senseless it had all been. If I died and he made it, I got to see them again and say I'd done one thing that was worth a damn.

V had mocked Fern for insisting he was human. I got the premise of why it irritated him. Fern had seen all the demon shit start happening up close and personal. It must have boggled his mind. How could she so staunchly consider him human?

It wasn't for the same reasons, but I knew her answer because mine was the same:

I needed him to be.

The faded knocking of the boat in the dock lulled me through those thoughts and through the days. Until finally the promised day came, and I heard the familiar click of a cane on concrete and a chatty scanner.

I waved and pointed down to the pier. There was only one boat out there—a sun-bleached thing patched in a dozen places, just the right size for three or four passengers. By the time they made it, I was waiting for them. Four days of travel hadn't worn 9S out at all. V looked a little tired, but then he always did.

"Nice wardrobe change," I said with a smile. "The both of you. Boat'll be ready in a minute, hop in."

V made a queasy face, and I knew instantly he didn't care for boats. But he got in without a fuss, and 9S followed right after him while I fiddled with a wire. The engine was in usable condition and I'd checked all the parts but getting around the key-based ignition was always a pain. It came to life with a loud stutter-pop before it evened out, and I sat up to the two of them sharing skeptical glances.

"Doesn't sound any worse than those shot-to-hell resistance camp trucks," I said defensively.

9S groaned. "I sure hope they handle better."

"Ocean's not quite as bad as the city's roads." I sat by the wheel and grinned like a snake as we pulled off. The engine coughed a little, but soon enough we were up to speed. "You ever decide on a name? Cause if you didn't, I'll spin around and point to something and whatever you get is what I'm gonna stick with."

He wrinkled his nose at me. For a moment, a cloud settled over him. He was worried, and it easy to guess what (or rather, who) he was thinking about. But just as quickly, his eyes softened, and he settled down into his seat to get comfortable for the journey.

"Forty-nine."

I looked aside at V, half because I wondered if he also thought it was a stupid name, and half curious to see if there was any explanation. All he did was meet my look with that secretive half-smile of his. There was something important about that number, and the kid's contented look told me plainly it probably had something to do with 2B.

Ah well. There'd been stupider names. I would know, I'd had some of them.

I turned northeast toward the mainland, and unconsciously, we all looked south. To the puttering of an old engine and the sound of ocean waves, the island where the 14th Machine War finally came to an end shrank to a blur on the hazy horizon and quietly disappeared.

* * *

**A/N: Another arc down, one more to go.**

**I will be taking another hiatus and this one will be for the full length of summer. April and May are not available for me to give this arc any attention at all due to prior obligations, and real-world events and the related trickle-down effects are starting to take their toll on me. ****The last arc is a different beast and is going to take time, energy, focus, and research to construct properly. And right now I am tired, stressed, and considering ritually sacrificing my neighbors just for a change of pace. **

**I'm intending to write a very short (talking 20k words max) side story in the interim about our gang's road trip, but there won't be anything super plot-relevant in it when/if I get to it. Just a return to the fun interactions and exploration of dynamics because who knows, that might be therapeutic at this point. **

**Either way, I'll see you in late August/early September with the last arc, where 9S commits grand theft auto with high-cost military equipment, Fern organizes a smuggling operation and channels her inner DoomGuy, V realizes the drakenier universe is caught in the plot of Amityville: It's About Time, and deeply irresponsible uses of gestalt/replicant tech are discovered. **

**Stay healthy and stay the fuck inside.**


End file.
